Exploring the inhibitory activity of short-chain phospholipids against amyloid fibrillogenesis of hen egg-white lysozyme

Amyloid fibrillogenesis is an important pathological feature of a group of degenerative human diseases. The 129-residue enzyme hen egg-white lysozyme has been shown to form fibrils in vitro at pH 2.0 and 55 °C. In this research, using various spectroscopic techniques, light scattering, and transmission electron microscopy, we first examined the influence of short-chain phospholipids on the amyloid fibrillogenesis and the structural changes derived from hen lysozyme in vitro. Both model short-chain phospholipids were observed to mitigate the fibrillogenesis of hen lysozyme. Also, urea-induced unfolding results suggested that the susceptibility of hen lysozyme to conformational changes elicited by the denaturant was observed to decrease upon addition of short-chain phospholipids. Moreover, our molecular dynamics simulations results demonstrated that the observed inhibitory action of short-chain phosoholipids against hen lysozyme fibrillogenesis might be attributable to the interference of β-strand extension by the binding of phospholipids to lysozyme's β-sheet-rich region. We believe that the outcome from this study may contribute to a better understanding the molecular factors affecting amyloid fibrillogenesis and the molecular mechanism(s) of the interactions between phospholipids/lipids and amyloid-forming proteins.

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► Short-chain phospholipids (DHPC) suppress the fibrillogenesis of hen lysozyme.
► Addition of DHPC triggers the structural changes of amyloid protein.
► DHPC inhibits fibrillogenesis by interference of β-strand extension.
► Addition of DHPC leads to formation of amorphous aggregates.