Amyloidogenic peptide oligomers are responsible for a variety of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Due to their dynamic, polydisperse, and polymorph nature, these oligomers are very challenging to characterize using traditional condensed-phase methods. In the last decade, ion mobility-mass spectrometry (IM-MS) and related gas-phase techniques have emerged as a powerful alternative to disentangle the structure and assembly characteristics of amyloid forming systems. This review highlights recent advances in which IM-MS was used to characterize amyloid oligomers and their underlying assembly pathway. In addition, we summarize recent studies in which IM-MS was used to size- and mass-select species for a further spectroscopic investigation and outline the potential of IM-MS as a tool for the screening of amyloid inhibitors.

go to article DOI: 10.1016/j.sbi.2017.03.002