Macromolecular crowding enhances amyloid fibril formation of human prion protein.

<p>Fibril formation of human prion protein in the absence and in the presence of Ficoll 70 (A) and Ficoll 400 (B), respectively, monitored by ThT fluorescence. The empirical Hill equation was fitted to the data and the solid lines represented the best fit. The final concentration of human PrP was 10 µM. The crowding agent concentrations were 0 (open square), 50 g/l (solid square), 100 g/l (solid circle), 150 g/l (solid triangle), and 200 g/l (inverted solid triangle), respectively. The human PrP was denatured in PBS buffer (pH 7.0) containing 2 M GdnHCl. The assays were carried out at 37°C.