Terminating the amyloid zipper by design

Zip code: A potentially general, computational design approach has been used to devise peptide inhibitors of protein aggregation into amyloid fibrils. The atomic structures of "steric zippers", which are formed by short fibril-forming segments of the amyloidogenic proteins, serve as templates. The validity of the approach is demonstrated by the design of inhibitors of amyloid formation associated with Alzheimer's disease pathology and HIV infectivity.