Interestingly, the exposed regions of YX-A-1 are quite hydrophobic (cylcohexane and benzene) - and we think this could be part of how it accelerates aggregation into higher order oligomers and protofilaments

We used 400us of enhanced sampling (REST2) all-atom MD to characterize the conformational ensembles of wild-type (WT) hIAPP, and the S20G variant (which accelerates aggregation and is associated with early-onset T2D) and characterize their interactions with these ligands.

Excited to share a new preprint:

"Monomer binding modes of small molecules that modulate the kinetics of hIAPP amyloid formation"

by graduate student Michelle Garcia together with post-doc Korey Reid.

Paper:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Code + Ensembles: github.com/paulrobustel...