Figure 2. Representative fluorescence intensity trace of amyloid formation.

Amyloid formation can be described as having three distinct phases: (1) nucleation/lag phase, (2) elongation/exponential growth phase, and (3) plateau phase. Kinetic differences can be quantified by measuring the lag time. This is performed by generating a trend line through the lag phase data points (blue) and a second line through the elongation phase data points (red). The time point at which these two lines intersect is defined as the lag time ( Nielsen et al., 2001 ).