Effect of the amyloid β hairpin's structure on the handedness of helices formed by its aggregates

Various structural models for amyloid β fibrils have been derived from a variety of experimental techniques. However, these models cannot differentiate between the relative position of the two arms of the β hairpin called the stagger. Amyloid fibrils of various hierarchical levels form left-handed helices composed of β sheets. However it is unclear if positive, negative and zero staggers all form the macroscopic left-handed helices. To address this issue we have conducted extensive molecular dynamics simulations of amyloid β sheets of various staggers and shown that only negative staggers lead to the experimentally observed left-handed helices while positive staggers generate the incorrect right-handed helices. This result suggests that the negative staggers are physiologically relevant structure of the amyloid β fibrils.