Figure 4. Stability of small fibrillar structures containing 10 peptides.

(a) The ensemble average of external (intermolecular) contacts versus temperature for different peptide sequences. External contacts are contacts between different peptides. (b) The ensemble average of hydrogen bonds versus temperature for different peptide sequences. These simulations started from small fibrillar configuration containing 10 peptides with 7 residues and different sequence compositions (see legend). In the temperature regime relevant for folding (), only fibrils that could form a strong hydrophobic core (TFTFTFT) are stable, in this case the hydrophobic residues would point inwards, as shown in Figure 3.