Abnormal prion proteins are little understood disease agents involved in causing horrific brain-wasting diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in people, mad cow disease in cattle and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk.
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Abnormal prion proteins (red stain) also appear as plaques (green stain) in the brains of scrapie-infected mice expressing anchorless prion proteins. |
Now, new research suggests that a variant form of abnormal prion protein--one lacking an "anchor" into the cell membrane--may be unable to signal cells to start the lethal disease process, according to scientists at the <<>>, part of the <<>>.