Université de Fribourg

Understanding amyloid aggregation by statistical analysis of atomic force microscopy images

Adamcik, Jozef ; Jung, Jin-Mi ; Flakowski, Jérôme ; Rios, Paolo De Los ; Dietler, Giovanni ; Mezzenga, Raffaele

In: Nature Nanotechnology, 2010, vol. 5, p. 423 - 428

The aggregation of proteins is central to many aspects of daily life, including food processing, blood coagulation, eye cataract formation disease and prion-related neurodegenerative infections. However, the physical mechanisms responsible for amyloidosis—the irreversible fibril formation of various proteins that is linked to disorders such as Alzheimer's, Creutzfeldt–Jakob and Huntington's...

Université de Fribourg

Effects of charge double layer and colloidal aggregation on the isotropic-nematic transition of protein fibers in water

Mezzenga, Raffaele ; Jung, Jin-Mi ; Adamcik, Jozef

In: Langmuir, 2010, vol. 26, no. 13, p. 10401–10405

We investigate the effects of variable linear charge density and Debye length on the mesoscopic properties of β-lactoglobulin fibers in water, by changing the pH and ionic strength, respectively. We determine the isotropic−nematic (I−N) transition by cross-polarized microscopy and quantify by atomic force microscopy the increasing tendency of the fibers to aggregate upon raising ionic...