Amyloid structures: much more than just a cross-β fold

Abstract

In recent years our understanding of amyloid structure has been revolutionised by innovations in cryo-electron microscopy, electron diffraction and solid-state NMR. These techniques have yielded high-resolution structures of fibrils isolated from patients with neurodegenerative disease, as well as those formed from amyloidogenic proteins in vitro. The results not only show the expected cross-β amyloid structure, but also reveal that the amyloid fold is unexpectedly diverse and complex. Here, we discuss this diversity, highlighting dynamic regions, ligand binding motifs, cavities, non-protein components, and structural polymorphism. Collectively, these variations combine to allow the generic amyloid fold to be realised in three dimensions in different ways, and this diversity may be related to the roles of fibrils in disease.