Multimodal methods to study protein aggregation and fibrillation

Abstract

This chapter presents a selection of multimodal (combined) methods for the integral investigation of different proteins/peptides and their aggregation or fibrillation process in three levels of complexity. The first level considers the in vitro scenario where isolated polypeptides are investigated by low-resolution and atomistic techniques. The second and third levels consider protein aggregation in the cellular context in vitro (Level 2) and biological environments ex vivo and in vivo like tissue and biofluids (Level 3) to investigate the process of aggregation as close as possible to the pathological conditions. The selected examples are presented considering different protein/peptide structural transitions toward forming both nonfibrillar or fibrillar aggregates and the combinations of techniques that provide meaningful insights into the aggregation process in three levels of complexity.