Unraveling the Speciation of β-Amyloid Peptides during the Aggregation Process by Taylor Dispersion Analysis

Aggregation mechanisms of amyloid β peptides depend on multiple intrinsic and extrinsic physicochemical factors (e.g., peptide chain length, truncation, peptide concentration, pH, ionic strength, temperature, metal concentration, etc.). Due to this high number of parameters, the formation of oligomers and their propensity to aggregate make the elucidation of this physiopathological mechanism a challenging task. From the analytical point of view, up to our knowledge, few techniques are able to quantify, in real time, the proportion and the size of the different soluble species during the aggregation process. This work aims at demonstrating the efficacy of the modern Taylor dispersion analysis (TDA) performed in capillaries (50 μm i.d.) to unravel the speciation of β-amyloid peptides in low-volume peptide samples (∼100 μL) with an analysis time of ∼3 min per run. TDA was applied to study the aggregation process of Aβ(1-40) and Aβ(1-42) peptides at physiological pH and temperature, where more than 140 data points were generated with a total volume of ∼1 μL over the whole aggregation study (about 0.5 μg of peptides). TDA was able to give a complete and quantitative picture of the Aβ speciation during the aggregation process, including the sizing of the oligomers and protofibrils, the consumption of the monomer, and the quantification of different early- and late-formed aggregated species.