Breakage dependent amyloid growth kinetics: a computational study

Abstract

Amyloid fibrils are generally associated with neurodegenerative diseases. Typically amyloid fibrils grow via converting the protein monomers into an infectious form by recruiting them into fibrils. Breakage of these fibrils will lead to more infectious filaments. In this work, we present a computational study of filament growth kinetics accounting for breakage. We use the kinetic Monte Carlo as well as mathematical counting techniques to perform the computational simulations. We show how the measurable quantities like the time to aggregate 50% (T50) and the maximum growth rate (Vmax) scale with various parameters in the model.