Macromolecular crowding favors the fibrillization of β2-microglobulin by accelerating the nucleation step and inhibiting fibril disassembly

Hemodialysis-associated amyloidosis (HAA) involves the fibrillization of β2-microglobulin (β2M) and occurs in crowded physiological environments. However, how macromolecular crowding affects amyloid formation of β2M remains elusive. Here we study the effects of macromolecular crowding on amyloid formation and fibril disassembly of wild-type human β2M and its pathogenic mutant ΔN6. At strongly acidic pH 2.5, the presence of a strong crowding agent (Ficoll 70 or dextran 70) not only dramatically accelerates the fibrillization of both wild-type β2M and its ΔN6 variant by reducing the lag time to a large extent, indicating the acceleration of the nucleation phase, but also remarkably increases the amount of β2M fibrils. At weakly acidic pH 6.2, such an enhancing effect of macromolecular crowding on fibril formation is only observed for pathogenic mutant ΔN6, but not for wild-type β2M which does not form amyloid fibrils in the absence and presence of a crowding agent. Thus, we propose that the monomers of β2M form the nuclei, which is enhanced by macromolecular crowding, followed by the step of fibril elongation. Furthermore, at physiological pH, macromolecular crowding remarkably inhibits β2M fibril disassembly by decreasing rate constants corresponding to fast and slow stages of fibril disaggregation. Our data demonstrate that macromolecular crowding favors the fibrillization of β2M by accelerating the nucleation step and inhibiting fibril disassembly. Our findings provide clear evidence for the pathology of HAA that macromolecular crowding should be taken into account.