The formation of amyloid fibrils from soluble proteins is a common form of self-assembly phenomenon that has fundamental connections with biological functions and human diseases. Lysozyme was converted from its soluble native state into highly organized amyloid fibrils. Ultrasonic treatment was used to break amyloid fibrils to fibrillar fragments-seeds. Atomic force microscopy and fluorescence microscopy was employed to characterize the morphology of the amyloid assemblies and neural cells-amyloid complexes. Our results demonstrate that prefibrillar intermediated and their mixture with proteins exhibit toxicity, although native proteins and fibrils appear to have no effect on number of cells. Our findings confirm that innocuous hen lysozyme can be engineered to produce both cytotoxic fibrillar fragments and non-toxic mature amyloid fibrils. Our work further strengthens the claim that amyloid conformation, and not the identity of the protein, is key to cellular toxicity and the underlying specific cell death mechanism.
Keywords: amyloid fibrils; atomic force microscopy; fluorescence microscopy; neural cells; protein aggregation.