Two Amyloid States of the Prion Protein Display Significantly Different Folding Patterns

It has been well established that a single amino acid sequence can give rise to several conformationally distinct amyloid states. The extent to which amyloid structures formed within the same sequence are different, however, remains unclear. To address this question, we studied two amyloid states (referred to as R- and S-fibrils) produced in vitro from highly purified full-length recombinant prion protein. Several biophysical techniques including X-ray diffraction, CD, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), hydrogen–deuterium exchange, proteinase K digestion, and binding of a conformation-sensitive fluorescence dye revealed that R- and S-fibrils have substantially different secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structures. While both states displayed a 4. 8-Å meridional X-ray diffraction typical for amyloid cross-β-spines, they showed markedly different equatorial profiles, suggesting different folding pattern of β-strands. The experiments on hydrogen–deuterium exchange monitored by FTIR revealed that only small fractions of amide protons were protected in R- or S-fibrils, an argument for the dynamic nature of their cross-β-structure. Despite this fact, both amyloid states were found to be very stable conformationally as judged from temperature-induced denaturation monitored by FTIR and the conformation-sensitive dye. Upon heating to 80 °C, only local unfolding was revealed, while individual state-specific cross-β features were preserved. The current studies demonstrated that the two amyloid states formed by the same amino acid sequence exhibited significantly different folding patterns that presumably reflect two different architectures of cross-β-structure. Both S- and R-fibrils, however, shared high conformational stability, arguing that the energy landscape for protein folding and aggregation can contain several deep free-energy minima.