{
  "abstract": "Amyloid fibrils extracted from patient tissue are enriched by physicochemical fractionation methods and enzymatic tissue digestion with collagenase, resulting in a mixture of sedimented complexes. Reprocessing of an ex vivo lysozyme amyloid dataset revealed non-amyloid tubular assemblies, which we reconstructed to 3.5 angstrom. Sequence-agnostic model building with CryoAtom and fold search with FoldSeek identified a phage tail tube fold. Testing the crude Clostridium histolyticum collagenase used for tissue digestion, negative-stain TEM and LC-MS/MS showed proteins of an F-type tailocin, allowing us to assign the helical reconstruction to a major tail tube protein (TTP) of C. histolyticum. We also observed tailocin contamination in cardiac light-chain amyloid extracts, following the same collagenase treatment. Overall, we identify tailocins as recurrent reagent-borne contaminants in collagenase-treated ex vivo amyloid preparations and propose strategies to detect and avoid such artefacts in single-particle cryo-EM by optimizing the experimental design and data annotation towards a database of common contaminants.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Scripps Research"
  ],
  "article_type": "New results",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 7,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "J.-H. Schaefer"
    },
    {
      "name": "R. T. O'Neill"
    },
    {
      "name": "Z. Gao"
    },
    {
      "name": "D. A. Grotjahn"
    },
    {
      "name": "E. T. Powers"
    },
    {
      "name": "G. C. Lander"
    },
    {
      "name": "J. W. Kelly"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0erpwpvf2mzrj.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.64898/2026.06.17.733002",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.17.733002v2.full",
  "id": "0erpwpvf2mzrj",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.17.733002v2",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "biorxiv",
      "biophysics"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1315|Advanced Electron Microscopy Techniques and Applications"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7165146656",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.17.733002v2.full.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-06-17",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0erpwpvf2mzrj.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:22:26Z",
      "native_id": "10.64898/2026.06.17.733002",
      "source": "biorxiv",
      "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.17.733002v2"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biochemistry",
      "origin": "biorxiv:biophysics",
      "subfield": "biophysics"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Tailocins are recurrent contaminants in ex vivo amyloid extraction",
  "title_text": "Tailocins are recurrent contaminants in ex vivo amyloid extraction",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:22:26Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0erpwpvf2mzrj",
  "venue": "bioRxiv",
  "versions": []
}