Studies of amyloid-like fibrillogenesis through beta-sheet-mediated self-assembly of short synthetic peptides.

Three structurally different types of small peptides, namely, i) Boc-Ile-Aib-Ile-OMe (Aib=alpha-aminoisobutyric acid), ii) Boc-Xx-m-aminobenzoic acid (Xx=beta-Ala and gamma-aminobutyric acid), and iii) Boc-Xx-m-nitroaniline, were found to exhibit beta-sheet-mediated fibrillogenesis in the solid state, revealed by FT-IR, single-crystal X-ray diffraction, and FE-SEM studies. Interestingly, the fibrils grown from peptides 2 and 3 were found to bind with the physiological dye Congo red, a characteristic feature of amyloid fibrils.