The targeting of non-fibrillar polyQ via distinct VCP-proteasome coupling

Nearest-neighbor distance analysis between macromolecule centers and fibril axis was performed using polyQ fibrils, which were detected as previously described with the XTracing module for segmentation in Amira. Briefly, tomograms were denoised using a non-local means filter, and fibril- containing regions were identified by searching for a cylindrical template with an 8 nm diameter and 42 nm length. Once fibrils were reliably detected and traced in Amira, a segmentation volume file was generated. Euclidean distances were then converted to physical units based on the pixel size, allowing for the calculation of macromolecule-to-fibril-axis distances.