Taylor Dispersion Analysis Discloses the Impairment of Aβ Peptide Aggregation by the Presence of a Fluorescent Tag

The use of fluorescently tagged amyloid peptides, implicated in Alzheimer's disease, to study their aggregation at low concentrations is a common method; however, the fluorescent tag should not introduce a bias in the aggregation process. In this work, native amyloid peptides Aβ(1-40) and Aβ(1-42) and fluorescein-5-isothiocyanate (FITC), tagged ones, were studied using Taylor dispersion analysis coupled with a simultaneous UV and light-emitting diode-induced fluorescence detection, to unravel the effect of FITC on the aggregation process. For that, a total concentration of 100 µM of peptides consisting of a mixture of native and tagged ones (up to 10% in moles) was applied. Results demonstrated that FITC had a strong inhibition effect upon the aggregation behaviour of Aβ(1-42), whereas for Aβ(1-40), only a retardation in kinetics was observed. It was also shown that when mixed solutions of Aβ(1-40) and Aβ(1-42) are used, the Aβ(1-42) alloform was the leading peptide in the aggregation process, and when the latter was tagged, the aggregation kinetics decreased but the lifetime of potentially toxic oligomers was drastically increased. These results confirmed that the hydrophilicity of the N-terminus part of the peptide plays a major role in the aggregation process.