Protein aggregation can proceed via disordered or ordered mechanisms, with the latter being associated with amyloid fibril formation, which has been linked to a number of debilitating conditions including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseases. Small heat-shock proteins (sHsps), such as aB-crystallin, act as chaperones to prevent protein aggre-gation and are thought to play a key role in the prevention of protein-mis-folding diseases.