Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
News and Views
Nature 447, 541-542 (31 May 2007) | doi:10.1038/447541b; Published online 30 May 2007
Open Innovation Challenges
-
Novel Approaches to Protecting Maize from Insect Damage
The Seeker is looking for novel approaches to protecting maize from insect damage. This Challenge re...
-
Methods of Modeling Adaptation in Populations
The analysis of adaptation with a population is a frequently encountered computational modeling scen...
- More Challenges
- Powered by:
nature jobs
Faculty Positions
- The Methodist Hospital Research Institute
- Houston, TX United States
Manager / Sr. Manager - Business Development (Custom Synthesis)
- Syngene International
- Bangalore, Karnataka 560099 India
Protein science: Discriminating taste of prions
Witold K. Surewicz1
Abstract
Prions are infectious proteins that are involved in brain-wasting disorders such as mad cow disease. In yeast, specific sequences of amino acids in prions seem to mediate prion propagation and cross-species transmissibility.
Few diseases have generated as much interest and controversy in recent years as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) — a group of fatal neurodegenerative disorders that includes Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans and 'mad cow' disease1, 2. The protein-only hypothesis of TSE propagation postulates that the infectious pathogen, called a prion, is devoid of the nucleic acids that comprise genes, and is an abnormally shaped version of the normal prion protein, a naturally occurring molecule of unknown function.
- Witold K. Surewicz is in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, USA.
Email: witold.surewicz@case.edu
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS
These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.
NEWS AND VIEWS
Prion strains under the magnifying glassNature Structural & Molecular Biology News and Views (01 Oct 2007)
Structural biology Prying into prionsNature News and Views (09 Jun 2005)
See all 13 matches for News And ViewsRESEARCH
Molecular mechanisms for protein-encoded inheritanceNature Structural & Molecular Biology Article (01 Sep 2009)
Prion recognition elements govern nucleation, strain specificity and species barriersNature Article (31 May 2007)
See all 39 matches for Research