Modulating Nanodroplet Formation En Route to Fibrillization of Amyloid Peptides with Designed Flanking Sequences

Soluble oligomers populating early amyloid aggregation can be regarded as nanodroplets of liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). Amyloid peptides typically contain hydrophobic aggregation-prone regions connected by hydrophilic linkers and flanking sequences, and such a sequence hydropathy pattern drives the formation of supramolecular structures in the nanodroplets and modulates subsequent fibrillization. Here, we studied LLPS and fibrillization of coarse-grained amyloid peptides with increasing flanking sequences. Nanodroplets assumed lamellar, cylindrical micellar, and spherical micellar structures with increasing peptide hydrophilic/hydrophobic ratios, and such morphologies governed subsequent fibrillization processes. Adding glycine-serine repeats as flanking sequences to Aβ_16-22, the amyloidogenic core of amyloid-β, our computational predictions of morphological transitions were corroborated experimentally. The uncovered inter-relationships between the peptide sequence pattern, oligomer/nanodroplet morphology, and fibrillization pathway, kinetics, and structure may contribute to our understanding of pathogenic amyloidosis in aging, facilitate future efforts ameliorating amyloidosis through peptide engineering, and aid in the design of novel amyloid-based functional nanobiomaterials and nanocomposites.