Cellular stress can induce yeast to promote prion formation

It's a chicken and egg question. Where do the infectious protein particles called prions come from? Essentially clumps of misfolded proteins, prions cause neurodegenerative disorders, such as mad cow/Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, ...

Multitarget drugs against prion diseases

The central nervous systems of humans and cattle alike are attacked by prions (abnormal insoluble amyloidogenic proteins) when they suffer from Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Mutant prions help cells foil harmful protein misfolding

Romping clumps of misfolded proteins are prime suspects in many neurological disorders including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease. Those diseases are devastating and incurable, but a team of biologists ...

Prions serve as important source of variation in nature

Special proteins known as prions, which are perhaps best known as the agents of mad cow and other neurodegenerative diseases, can also serve as an important source of beneficial variation in nature, confirms a new study in ...

Prion discovery gives clue to control of mass gene expression

The discovery in common brewer's yeast of a new, infectious, misfolded protein -- or prion -- by University of Illinois at Chicago molecular biologists raises new questions about the roles played by these curious molecules, ...

What drove the cow mad? Lessons from a tiny fish

For over twenty years, scientists have known that a normal protein in the brain, PrP, or prion protein, can turn harmful and cause deadly illnesses like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy ...

Sticky antibodies block prion disease

(PhysOrg.com) -- Antibodies that stick to a brain prion protein called PrP could be the key to treating prion diseases like variant CJD and preventing people accidentally exposed to prions from going on to develop the fatal ...

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