Introduction and technical survey: Protein aggregation and fibrillogenesis

In this chapter we provided the overall background to the subject of protein aggregation and fibrillogenesis in amyloidogenesis, with introduction and brief discussion of the various topics that are included with the coming chapters. The division of the book into basic science and clinical science sections enables correlation of the topics to be made. The many proteins and peptides that have currently been found to undergo fibrillogenesis are tabulated. A broad technical survey is made, to indicate the vast array of techniques currently available to study aspects of protein oligomerization, aggregation and fibrillogenesis. These are split into three groups and tabulated, as the microscopical techniques, the analytical and biophysical methods, and the biochemical and cellular techniques. A few techniques are discussed, but in most cases only a link to relevant recent literature is provided.