Microbiology and Immunology 2500A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, Chronic Wasting Disease, Neurodegeneration
29 Apr 2021
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Document Summary
Neurodegenerative diseases, always fatal, no available therapies. Transmissible: because they can be transmitted experimentally by inoculation. Spongiform: because microscopic vacuoles in brain tissue are a feature that help identify the disease. Encephalopathies: because these are diseases (-pathy) of the brain (encephalo-) Transmission is likely from ewes to offspring, but it is not well understood. Not though to be transmissible to humans. The protein only hypothesis for scrapie was first proposed by stanley pruisner in 1982. Tses were initially thought to be caused by an unidentified slow virus. The dogma was that transmissible infections required nucleic acid. Lost his grants, was denied tenure at ucsf. Prions are a form of host protein found predominantly on the surface of neurons. The natural protein is called prpc: the cellular (c) prion protein: Is a highly conserved protein in mammals: the normal functions of prpc are not well understood though to be involved in synaptic function, prpc is not infectious.
