Bacterial amyloids

Abstract

Many bacteria can assemble functional amyloid fibers on their cell surface. Most bacterial amyloids contribute to biofilm or other community behaviors where cells interact with a surface or with other cells. Bacterial amyloids, like all functional amyloids, share structural and biochemical properties with disease-associated eukaryotic amyloids. The general ability of amyloids to bind specific dyes, like Congo red and Thioflavin T, and their resistance to denaturation have provided useful tools for scoring and quantifying bacterial amyloid formation. Here, we present basic approaches to study bacterial amyloids by focusing on the well-studied curli amyloid fibers expressed by Enterobacteriaceae. These methods exploit the specific tinctorial and biophysical properties of amyloids. The methods described here are straightforward and can be easily applied by any modern molecular biology lab for the study of other bacterial amyloids.