Background: Stefin B, an established model protein for studying the
stability and mechanism of protein folding, was used for monitoring protein
aggregation and formation of amyloid structure by infrared spectroscopy.
Methods: The analyses of the integral intensities of the low frequency
part of the Amide I band, which is directly connected to the appearance of the
cross- structure reveals the temperature but not pH dependence of stefin
B structure. Results: We show that pH value has significant role in the
monomer stability of stefin B. Protein is less stable in acidic environment and
becomes more stable in neutral or basic conditions. While in the case of the
Amide I band area analysis we apply only spectral regions characteristic for only
part of the protein in cross- structure, the temperature study using
multivariate curve resolution (MCR) analysis contains also information about the
protein conformation states which do not correspond to native protein nor protein
in cross- structure. Conclusions: These facts results in the
slightly different shapes of fitted sigmoid functions fitted to the weighted
amount of the second basic spectrum (sc2), which is the closed approximation of
the protein spectra with cross- structure. Nevertheless, the applied
method detects the initial change of the protein structure. Upon the analysis of
infrared data a model for stefin B aggregation is proposed.