Promotion Effect of Succinimide on Amyloid Fibrillation of Hen Egg-White Lysozyme

Amyloid fibrillation is closely associated with a series of neurodegenerative diseases. According to that, the intermediate soluble oligomers and protofibrils are more toxic; reducing their concentrations in protein solutions by accelerating fibrillation is believed as a feasible strategy for treatment or remission of the diseases. Using hen egg-white lysozyme (HEWL) as a model protein, the promotion effect of succinimide was revealed by a series of experiments, e.g., atomic force microscopy (AFM), thioflavin T (ThT) fluorescence assay, Far-UV circular dichroism (CD) and Raman spectroscopy, and modeling the effect of succinimide-like derivative intermediates of intramolecular deamidation of the backbone during amyloid fibrillation. The AFM measurement confirmed that succinimide effectively accelerated the morphological changes of HEWL, while at the molecular level, the accelerative transformation of protein secondary structures was also clarified by ThT fluorescence assay and Far-UV CD spectroscopy. The incubation time-dependent Raman spectroscopy further revealed that the direct transformation from alpha-helices to organized beta-sheets occurred upon skipping the intermediate random coils under the action of succinimide. This "bridge" effect of succinimide was attributed to its special influence on disulfide bonds. In the presence of succinimide in protein solutions, the native disulfide bonds of lysozyme could be broken more efficiently and quickly within hydrolysis, resulting in exposure of the buried hydrophobic residues and accelerating the formation of cross beta-sheet structures. The present investigation provides very useful information for understanding the effect of intramolecular deamidation on the whole amyloid fibrillation.