Figure 1.

Schematic view of the crystallographic dimer of TTR (PDB entry 1F41; Hornberg et al. 2000), with the identification of the β-strands. Amyloid formation by TTR implies tetramer dissociation, structural alteration of the monomer, and subunit association into aggregates. The monomer–monomer interaction is believed to be mediated by two types of interfaces: a near-native interface (NearNI) comprising strands F/F′ and H/H′ (in yellow) of adjacent subunits, and a non-native interface (NonNI) constituted by strands A/A′ and B/B′ (in brown) of adjacent subunits. In order to expose strands A and B, a partially disrupted monomer was built by removing strands C and D and the loops AB and CD (in red). The figure was produced with the program VMD (Humphrey et al. 1996).