Designing Biosensors to Monitor Protein Folding and Aggregation
A growing number of diseases seem to be associated with toxic deposition of protein aggregates. Some of these diseases — such as Alzheimer’s disease— have been recognized for a long time. However, it is now clear that ordered aggregation of pathogenic proteins does not only occur in the extracellular space, but in the cytoplasm and nucleus as well, indicating that many other diseases may also qualify as amyloidoses. I will present recent results on designing biosensors for protein conformation and folding, with particular focus on imaging tools for amyloid growth and aggregation in vivo.