State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics and Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, People's Republic of China. Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing 210093, People's Republic of China.
Nanotechnology. 2018 Dec 7;29(49):495102. doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/aae143. Epub 2018 Sep 13.
The aggregation of human islet amyloid polypeptides (hIAPP) to mature fibrils is considered as the main cause of type II diabetes. Therefore destroying the pre-formed hIAPP fibrils is expected to be a promising strategy for therapeutic treatments. In this work, the dissociation effects of graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets on hIAPP mature fibrils are investigated. The results clearly demonstrate that hIAPP fibrils can be quickly adsorbed on the GO surface and efficiently broken into short fragments. Meanwhile, the β-sheet structures of hIAPP fibrils are greatly destroyed. Particularly, in situ atomic force microscopy was applied to monitor the real-time interaction between hIAPP fibrils and GO nanosheets. It provides distinct evidence that the disruption of hIAPP fibrils by GO nanosheets mainly occurs at the GO edges. Size-dependent experiments further justify the interfere of edge contribution, which suggest small-sized GO nanosheets exhibit better dissociation ability than large-sized ones. Therefore, this study not only provides valuable information that GO nanosheets (especially small-sized ones) can act as efficient nanoblades to break hIAPP fibrils, but also suggests a powerful and widely available methodology for investigating real-time interaction between nanomaterials and biomolecules.
人胰岛淀粉样多肽（hIAPP）的聚集形成成熟纤维被认为是 II 型糖尿病的主要原因。因此，破坏预先形成的 hIAPP 纤维有望成为一种有前途的治疗策略。在这项工作中，研究了氧化石墨烯（GO）纳米片对 hIAPP 成熟纤维的解离作用。结果清楚地表明，hIAPP 纤维可以快速吸附在 GO 表面上，并有效地被打断成短片段。同时，hIAPP 纤维的β-折叠结构也被大大破坏。特别地，原位原子力显微镜被应用于监测 hIAPP 纤维和 GO 纳米片之间的实时相互作用。它提供了明确的证据，表明 GO 纳米片对 hIAPP 纤维的破坏主要发生在 GO 边缘。尺寸依赖性实验进一步证明了边缘贡献的干扰，表明小尺寸的 GO 纳米片比大尺寸的具有更好的解离能力。因此，这项研究不仅提供了有价值的信息，即 GO 纳米片（特别是小尺寸的）可以作为有效的纳米刀片来打断 hIAPP 纤维，还为研究纳米材料和生物分子之间的实时相互作用提供了一种强大而广泛可用的方法。
