Fibrils

In healthy people, tau helps stabilise structures in the brain but, in neurodegenerative diseases, it can clump together into ‘fibrils’.

The NTU team designed shape-memory polymers, which are smart materials that can 'remember' their previous forms, in the form of hair-like fibrils which they found in their testing to provide maximum adhesive strength.

A spin-out company, Spintex Ltd, from Oxford University, partly funded by an EU H2020 grant, is exploring spinning silk proteins the spider's way and focuses on copying the sub-micron structures of bundled fibrils.

Longitudinal muscular fibrils formed from the cells of the ectoderm allow tentacles to contract when conveying the food to the mouth.

Multiple collagen fibrils form into collagen fibers.

Similarly, circularly disposed muscular fibrils formed from the endoderm permit tentacles to be protract or thrust out once they are contracted.

Similarly, there are horizontal wisps of gas called fibrils, which last about twice as long as spicules.

Some tissues such as muscles can be made transparent, provided either they are very thin or organised as regular layers or fibrils that are small compared to the wavelength of visible light.

The presence of amyloid fibrils in patients with degenerative diseases has been well documented.

These synthesise collagen within the cell, and then secrete collagen fibrils.

When proteins bind specifically to other copies of the same molecule, they can oligomerize to form fibrils; this process occurs often in structural proteins that consist of globular monomers that self-associate to form rigid fibers.