Vilnius University View Institution's Website 2 articles published in JoVE Biochemistry Characterizing Individual Protein Aggregates by Infrared Nanospectroscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy Francesco Simone Ruggeri1, Tomas Šneideris1,2, Sean Chia1, Michele Vendruscolo1, Tuomas P. J. Knowles1,3 1Centre for Misfolding Diseases, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, 2Institute of Biotechnology, Life Sciences Center, Vilnius University, 3Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge We describe the application of infrared nanospectroscopy and high-resolution atomic force microscopy to visualize the process of protein self-assembly into oligomeric aggregates and amyloid fibrils, which is closely associated with the onset and development of a wide range of human neurodegenerative disorders. Biology Chromatographic Purification of Highly Active Yeast Ribosomes Arturas Meskauskas1,2, Jonathan A. Leshin1, Jonathan D. Dinman1 1Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, University of Maryland, 2Department of Biotechnology and Microbiology, Vilnius University Contamination of preparations of eukaryotic ribosomes purified by traditional methods by co-purifying nucleases and proteases negatively impacts on downstream biochemical and structural analyses. A rapid and simple chromatographic purification method is used to solve this problem using yeast ribosomes as a model system.