Structural and functional characterization of self-assembling fragments identified from the transthyretin...

The structural biology of amyloid-like systems has experienced significant advances due to the impressive technological and methodological advancements of experimental and computational techniques, providing unprecedented atomic-level details into the molecular architecture of these aggregates. Taking advantage of the availability of novel and complex amyloid-like protein structures, we evaluated the possibility of expanding the universe of self-assembling peptides by exploiting these structural data. We utilized transthyretin, a protein whose amyloid-like aggregation has significant pathological consequences but has never been employed to generate peptide-based materials, as a model system to develop a procedure for identifying novel self-assembling peptides. The pipeline we developed is based on the preliminary evaluation of the stability of the fragments through molecular dynamics simulations, experimental verification of the formation of cross-β assemblies in both solution and the solid state, and characterization of the functional properties of the generated biomaterial. In this framework, we demonstrate that selected transthyretin-based peptides have a strong tendency to self-assemble and form soft hydrogels. The characterization of these systems suggests that a mixture of these peptides tends to aggregate by co-assembly, mimicking the interactions that stabilize the amyloid-like structure of the parent protein. Our data emphasize the role that local structures play in the mechanical and optical properties of these assemblies.