RESEARCH ARTICLE


Amyloid Oligomer Structures and Toxicity



Charles G. Glabe*
Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA


Article Metrics

CrossRef Citations:
5
Total Statistics:

Full-Text HTML Views: 534
Abstract HTML Views: 540
PDF Downloads: 402
Total Views/Downloads: 1476
Unique Statistics:

Full-Text HTML Views: 367
Abstract HTML Views: 362
PDF Downloads: 318
Total Views/Downloads: 1047



Creative Commons License
© 2009 Charles G. Glabe

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA; Fax: +1 949 824 8551; E-mail: cglabe@uci.edu


Abstract

Amyloid accumulation is commonly associated with a number of important human degenerative diseases and recent findings indicate that soluble amyloid oligomers may represent the primary pathological species in degenerative diseases. Amyloid oligomers are structurally and morphologically diverse, raising the question on whether this diversity is pathologically significant and whether different types of oligomers may have different toxic activities. Many of the amyloids associated with neurodegenerative diseases form three immunologically distinct types of oligomers. Fibrillar oligomers are structurally related to fibrils and may represent small pieces of fibrils or fibril protofilaments. Prefibrillar oligomers are kinetic intermediates in fibril formation and annular protofibrils that resemble membrane pores. These three classes of oligomers share common structures and toxic activities. Focus on these common mechanisms of toxicity provides a means of simplifying the list of primary disease mechanisms and opens the possibility of developing broad spectrum therapeutics that target several amyloid related degenerative diseases.

Keywords: Amyloid, structure, toxicity, amyloid oligomers, amyloid disease, pathogenesis.