Sequence-targeted Peptides Divert Functional Bacterial Amyloid Towards Destabilized Aggregates and Reduce Biofilm Formation

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  • Thorbjørn V. Sønderby
  • Nikolaos N. Louros
  • Ladan Khodaparast
  • Laleh Khodaparast
  • Daniel J. Madsen
  • William P. Olsen
  • Nele Moonen
  • Madhu Nagaraj
  • Sereikaité, Vita
  • Strømgaard, Kristian
  • Frederic Rousseau
  • Joost Schymkowitz
  • Daniel E. Otzen

Functional bacterial amyloid provides structural stability in biofilm, making it a promising target for anti-biofilm therapeutics. Fibrils formed by CsgA, the major amyloid component in E. coli are extremely robust and can withstand very harsh conditions. Like other functional amyloids, CsgA contains relatively short aggregation-prone regions (APR) which drive amyloid formation. Here, we demonstrate the use of aggregation-modulating peptides to knock down CsgA protein into aggregates with low stability and altered morphology. Remarkably, these CsgA-peptides also modulate fibrillation of the unrelated functional amyloid protein FapC from Pseudomonas, possibly through recognition of FapC segments with structural and sequence similarity with CsgA. The peptides also reduce the level of biofilm formation in E. coli and P. aeruginosa, demonstrating the potential for selective amyloid targeting to combat bacterial biofilm.

Original languageEnglish
Article number168039
JournalJournal of Molecular Biology
Volume435
Issue number11
ISSN0022-2836
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

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© 2023 The Authors

    Research areas

  • amyloid inhibition, biofilm, functional bacterial amyloid, modulation, peptides

ID: 362338210