Seminar Anja Bockmann

Solid-state NMR of protein fibrils

Solid-state NMR was the first high-resolution structural biology approach to provide insights into the molecular organization of protein fibrils. Fibrils are best known for their role in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, but they are actually far more widespread and functionally diverse, as they are also found in connection with bacterial and viral infections, among other things.

A characteristic feature of many protein fibrils is that they violate the Anfinsen dogma, according to which the native structure is determined exclusively by the protein’s amino acid sequence.

I will introduce the concepts of structural biology, solid-state NMR, and the solid-state NMR linewidth, which provides access to the diverse states in protein fibrils and serves as a measure of the static and dynamic disorder exhibited by biological objects at the atomic level. I will illustrate these concepts with examples of crystalline, fibrillar, and membrane-bound proteins.