Title |
Structure of the toxic core of α-synuclein from invisible crystals
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Published in |
Nature, September 2015
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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. |
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Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
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United States | 13 | 27% |
Japan | 5 | 10% |
United Kingdom | 5 | 10% |
Spain | 2 | 4% |
Germany | 1 | 2% |
France | 1 | 2% |
Central African Republic | 1 | 2% |
Unknown | 20 | 42% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 36 | 75% |
Scientists | 8 | 17% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 3 | 6% |
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 1 | 2% |
Mendeley readers
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% |