In-vitro Assembly and Cellular Effect of Amyloidogenic Proteins Involved in Neurodegenerative Diseases

Understanding the mechanism in which amyloid proteins form and aggregate are crucial for their detection and diagnosis but also in devising means to control and target such mechanisms for therapeutic purposes. Against this background, during a summer school organized by the Biomedical Research and Teaching Center (BioRTC), Yobe State University, Nigeria; we studied the invitro mechanism of amyloid protein (Aβ1-42 and dGEA) using Proteinase K digestion assay, Assessing self-assembly using BCA assay, Thioflavin T assay and Immunofluorescence assay with SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cell line. The group was able to Maintain healthy immortalized cell lines in culture, Set up and monitor the self-assembly and structural characteristics of amyloidogenic proteins using biophysical methods, Treat cells with different self-assembled forms of proteins, Lyse cells, measure total protein concentration, and carry out a western blot to determine changes in protein levels in response to treatment with amyloidogenic proteins, Examine protein localization and distribution within fixed cells using immunofluorescence (IF) staining on fixed cells