Nanomechanics of Amyloid Materials Studied by Atomic Force Microscopy

Introduction Amyloid materials and their mechanical propertiesAmyloids are usually used to refer to a wide range of fibrous nanostructures formed from natural and synthetic proteins and peptides.The self-propagating protein aggregates are rich in -sheets, which stack in hundreds to thousands units perpendicular to the fibrous axis, forming fibrils 5-15 nm in width and several micrometers in length (Dobson, 1999;