Prusiner proved that prions are a deformed version of an otherwise harmless protein called PRP.
The researchers suggest this kind of mutation could be how the prions cross between species naturally.
When a cow has BSE, certain parts of its carcass harbour far larger concentrations of prions than others.
Prions, beta-amyloid and synuclein, by contrast, are full of sticky structures called beta-sheets that react willy-nilly with crucial proteins.
The researchers used brain tissues infected with the spontaneously occurring version of CJD, which is also caused by prions.
Thus it may be the key which explains how prions are able to jump so effectively across the species barrier.
There is still debate whether single prions or clusters are the villains.
The sample is incubated with platelets and exposed to repeated rounds of ultrasound, which break the prions up into more numerous smaller particles.
At present doctors test for the presence of abnormal proteins called prions which are thought to cause the disease by killing off brain cells.
Diseases caused by prions often take many years to produce symptoms.
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The first sign of the disease was simple clumsiness and lack of balance - classic early signs of the prions that cause vCJD damaging the brain.
Pentosan, it is hoped, may be able to latch onto prions, rendering them less harmful, and perhaps allowing them to be flushed out of brain cells.
The technique, known as protein misfolding cyclic amplification (PMCA), works by by mimicking and accelerating the replication of prions so they are more easily detected in test samples.
Scientists had long assumed that these disorders must be caused by a virus, but Prusiner had proposed back in 1982 that deformed proteins, called prions, were the culprit.
Lansbury noticed parallels between his Alzheimer's theory and Prusiner's prions.
Unaltered mouse prions were unable to latch onto hamster prions.
It is therefore essential to understand how this disease is transmitted from one species to another, especially in the case of humans where the infectious prions survive through stages of cooking and digestion.
He showed that just as the bad amyloid-42 sped the formation of amyloid clusters, so a small number of pathological prions could convert good prions to the dark side, at least in test-tube experiments.
Two recent books take very different approaches to the narrative of bacteria and viruses, prions and protists that humanity has known for centuries and the brand new bugs that, by opportunistic accident, hop between species and start a new evolutionary tussle.
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