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Updated: Jun 1, 2026

Rapid Generation of Amyloid from Native Proteins In vitro
Published on: December 5, 2013
Metastability of native proteins and the phenomenon of amyloid formation
Andrew J Baldwin1, Tuomas P J Knowles, Gian Gaetano Tartaglia
1Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK.
Abstract:
An experimental determination of the thermodynamic stabilities of a series of amyloid fibrils reveals that this structural form is likely to be the most stable one that protein molecules can adopt even under physiological conditions. This result challenges the conventional assumption that functional forms of proteins correspond to the global minima in their free energy surfaces and suggests that living systems are conformationally as well as chemically metastable.
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