↓ Skip to main content

Structure of the toxic core of α-synuclein from invisible crystals

Overview of attention for article published in Nature, September 2015
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (97th percentile)
  • Above-average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (52nd percentile)

Citations

dimensions_citation
519 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
740 Mendeley
citeulike
4 CiteULike
Title
Structure of the toxic core of α-synuclein from invisible crystals
Published in
Nature, September 2015
DOI 10.1038/nature15368
Pubmed ID
Authors

Jose A. Rodriguez, Magdalena I. Ivanova, Michael R. Sawaya, Duilio Cascio, Francis E. Reyes, Dan Shi, Smriti Sangwan, Elizabeth L. Guenther, Lisa M. Johnson, Meng Zhang, Lin Jiang, Mark A. Arbing, Brent L. Nannenga, Johan Hattne, Julian Whitelegge, Aaron S. Brewster, Marc Messerschmidt, Sébastien Boutet, Nicholas K. Sauter, Tamir Gonen, David S. Eisenberg

Abstract

The protein α-synuclein is the main component of Lewy bodies, the neuron-associated aggregates seen in Parkinson disease and other neurodegenerative pathologies. An 11-residue segment, which we term NACore, appears to be responsible for amyloid formation and cytotoxicity of human α-synuclein. Here we describe crystals of NACore that have dimensions smaller than the wavelength of visible light and thus are invisible by optical microscopy. As the crystals are thousands of times too small for structure determination by synchrotron X-ray diffraction, we use micro-electron diffraction to determine the structure at atomic resolution. The 1.4 Å resolution structure demonstrates that this method can determine previously unknown protein structures and here yields, to our knowledge, the highest resolution achieved by any cryo-electron microscopy method to date. The structure exhibits protofibrils built of pairs of face-to-face β-sheets. X-ray fibre diffraction patterns show the similarity of NACore to toxic fibrils of full-length α-synuclein. The NACore structure, together with that of a second segment, inspires a model for most of the ordered portion of the toxic, full-length α-synuclein fibril, presenting opportunities for the design of inhibitors of α-synuclein fibrils.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 48 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 740 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 8 1%
United Kingdom 6 <1%
France 1 <1%
Chile 1 <1%
Denmark 1 <1%
Canada 1 <1%
Japan 1 <1%
Poland 1 <1%
Unknown 720 97%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 209 28%
Researcher 146 20%
Student > Bachelor 70 9%
Student > Master 60 8%
Student > Doctoral Student 34 5%
Other 95 13%
Unknown 126 17%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 191 26%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 156 21%
Chemistry 109 15%
Neuroscience 49 7%
Physics and Astronomy 25 3%
Other 71 10%
Unknown 139 19%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 68. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 August 2023.
All research outputs
#623,021
of 25,349,035 outputs
Outputs from Nature
#25,378
of 97,360 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#8,085
of 273,997 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature
#465
of 980 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,349,035 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 97th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 97,360 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 102.4. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 73% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 273,997 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 980 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 52% of its contemporaries.