Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, J. J. Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK.
Science. 2009 Dec 11;326(5959):1533-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1178250.
We present an analytical treatment of a set of coupled kinetic equations that governs the self-assembly of filamentous molecular structures. Application to the case of protein aggregation demonstrates that the kinetics of amyloid growth can often be dominated by secondary rather than by primary nucleation events. Our results further reveal a range of general features of the growth kinetics of fragmenting filamentous structures, including the existence of generic scaling laws that provide mechanistic information in contexts ranging from in vitro amyloid growth to the in vivo development of mammalian prion diseases.
我们提出了一组耦合动力学方程的解析处理方法，该方程组控制着丝状分子结构的自组装。应用于蛋白质聚集的情况表明，淀粉样生长的动力学通常可以由次级而不是初级成核事件主导。我们的结果进一步揭示了碎裂丝状结构生长动力学的一系列一般特征，包括通用标度律的存在，这些标度律在从体外淀粉样生长到哺乳动物朊病毒病体内发展的各种情况下提供了机制信息。
