Polymerization of proteins, is it protein aggregation? what is a crosslinking agent?

Question

I'm a high school student and I don't understand when they refer to polymerization of proteins, is it the same as protein aggregation?

Answer 1

No these two things are different.

Polymerization is the action of building a polypeptide (protein) out of single amino acids. Aggregation is when multiple proteins come together in one group.

Crosslinking agents are usually chemicals that can be used to cause covalent linkages between molecules.  These agents are often used in molecular biology to study proteins that interact, these agents help "capture" the interaction which could be weak or very short lived.