Physiological Role of Amyloid Beta in Neural Cells: The Cellular Trophic Activity

Abstract

Amyloid is a term for the build-up of protein deposits or plaques in the body. Thus amyloid are extracellular insoluble fibrous protein aggregates. One characteristic is that these fibrils acquire β-sheet structure. Therefore the structure of the proteins that form deposits is altered and often exhibits inappropriate folding. The misfolded proteins, interact with each other and with other proteins, forming aggregates and the accumulation of these amyloid fibrils in particular organs is call amyloidosis, which is characteristic of several pathologies, including neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, type II diabetes, familial amyloidoses and other variants of systemic amyloidoses [1].