(185g) The Use of Microchannel Electrophoresis to Detect Early Stages of Amyloid-Beta Aggregation

Amyloid proteins are involved in a variety of diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and diabetes. A number of technical challenges exist for the quantitative analysis of the different sizes of amyloid proteins which are present during the early stages of aggregation, therefore requiring new technologies to be developed for enhanced protein separations. Microchannel electrophoretic techniques have emerged as powerful tools for the quantitative analysis of proteins. Previously, we investigated the ability of capillary electrophoresis (CE) to monitor insulin oligomerization and aggregation over time. In this study, we investigated the ability of CE to monitor the early stages of amyloid aggregation using Amyloid-Beta as a model amyloid-forming protein. The sizes of Amyloid-Beta aggregates produced using size exclusion chromatography-purified Amyloid-Beta monomer as the starting material are compared to the sizes produced using a more traditional Amyloid-Beta sample preparation. Furthermore, the utility of microchip electrophoresis to detect Beta-sheet possessing species is investigated.