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Updated: May 22, 2026

Characterizing Individual Protein Aggregates by Infrared Nanospectroscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy
Published on: September 12, 2019
Structural characterization of prefibrillar intermediates and amyloid fibrils by small-angle X-ray scattering
Annette Eva Langkilde1, Bente Vestergaard
1Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Abstract:
Structural investigation of the species present during protein fibrillation is of tremendous importance, yet complicated by the equilibrium between species of very different sizes and life-times. Small-angle X-ray scattering may be applied to solve this problem, providing both information about the process (number of species present and volume fractions of individual species) and low-resolution three-dimensional shape reconstructions of individual species. Here, we describe in detail the challenges associated with the approach, exemplified using data from fibrillating insulin or α-synuclein samples.
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