Fig. 3.

(A) MSD of the hydration water around monomers (D-tau-H₂O) and fibers (D-fiber-H₂O) of the tau protein. The MSD were extracted from the Gaussian approximation fitted between q values of 0.78 Å⁻¹ and 1.76 Å⁻¹. (B) Comparison of the raw QENS spectra of D-fiber-H₂O and D-tau-H₂O at 280 K, binned over q values from 0.45 Å⁻¹ to 1.66 Å⁻¹. The spectra of D-tau-H₂O were extracted from Schiró et al. (29). For a visual comparison, the spectra were scaled with a multiplicative factor and corrected for a linear background. Because QENS spectra are symmetrical, the focus was put on positive energy exchange. (C) MSD of monomers (H-tau-D₂O) and fibers (H-fiber-D₂O) of the tau protein. They were extracted from the Gaussian approximation with a q⁴ correction between q values of 0.43 Å⁻¹ and 1.93 Å⁻¹. The error bars represent the SD output from the fitting procedure. Data on H-tau-D₂O were taken from ref. 13 and reanalyzed.