Commentary
Modeling amyloids in bacteria
1 Departament de Bioquímica i Biologia Molecular, Facultat de Biociències, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra E-08193, Spain
2 Institut de Biotecnologia i de Biomedicina, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra E-08193, Spain
Microbial Cell Factories 2012, 11:166 doi:10.1186/1475-2859-11-166
Published: 28 December 2012Abstract
An increasing number of proteins are being shown to assemble into amyloid structures, self-seeding fibrillar aggregates that may lead to pathological states or play essential biological functions in organisms. Bacterial cell factories have raised as privileged model systems to understand the mechanisms behind amyloid assembly and the cellular fitness cost associated to the formation of these aggregates. In the near future, these bacterial systems will allow implementing high-throughput screening approaches to identify effective modulators of amyloid aggregation.
