Vibrational Optical Activity of Amyloid Fibrils

Abstract

Amyloid fibrils are supramolecular systems showing distinct chirality at different levels of their complex multilayered architectures. Due to the regular long-range chiral organization, amyloid fibrils exhibit the most intense Vibrational Optical Activity (VOA) signal observed up to now, making VOA techniques: Vibrational Circular Dichroism (VCD) and Raman Optical Activity (ROA) very promising tools to explore their structures, handedness and intricate polymorphism. This concept article reviews up-to-date experimental studies on VOA applications to investigate amyloid fibrils highlighting its future potential in analyzing of these unique supramolecular systems, in particular in the context of biomedicine and nanotechnology.

Keywords: Raman optical activity; aggregation; amyloid fibrils; chirality; vibrational circular dichroism.