Fluorescence labeling methods influence the aggregation process of α-syn in vitro differently

In a previous study, the coexistence of different aggregation pathways of insulin and β-amyloid (Aβ) peptides was demonstrated by correlative stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM). This had been explained by suboptimal proteins labeling strategies that generate heterogeneous populations of aggregating species. However, because of the limited number of proteins considered, the failure of the fluorescent labeling that occurs in a large portion of the aggregating fibrils observed for insulin and Aβ peptides, could not be considered a general phenomenon valid for all molecular systems. Here, we investigated the aggregation process of α-synuclein (α-syn), an amyloidogenic peptide involved in Parkinson's disease, which is significantly larger (MW ∼14 kDa) than insulin and Aβ, previously investigated. The results showed that an unspecific labeling procedure, such as that previously adopted for shorter proteins, reproduced the coexistence of labeled/unlabeled fibers. Therefore, a site-specific labeling method was developed to target a domain of the peptide scarcely involved in the aggregation process. Correlative STED-AFM illustrated that all fibrillar aggregates derived from the aggregation of α-syn at the dye-to-protein ratio of 1 : 22 were fluorescent. These results, demonstrated here for the specific case of α-syn, highlight that the labeling artifacts can be avoided by careful designing the labeling strategy for the molecular system under investigation. The use of a label-free correlative microscopy technique would play a crucial role in the control of the setting of these conditions.