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Anyone has an insight on why all these prion-borne diseases ultimately destroy the brain in similar ways? Do they all target the same family of proteins, only s
by throw310822 3y ago
Anyone has an insight on why all these prion-borne diseases ultimately destroy the brain in similar ways? Do they all target the same family of proteins, only slightly different depending on the species? Are there prion diseases that affect other organs?
- salawat 3y agoIf you look into the lit, the PrP protein plays a heavy part in the synaptic structural changes involved with long term memory formation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion There has been one other prion candidate found that essentially shreds every other organ system, in fact. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-synuclein https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-synuclein Decontamination and denaturing of the bloody things requires going to Herculean lengths.
- wiml 3y agoMy understanding is that all the well known mammalian prion diseases are the same prion protein. The disease it causes has a variety of names in different contexts: CWD, vCJD, kuru, mad cow. There are some other suspected prions in fungi, and there's suspicion that some other human diseases are actually caused by an as-yet-unknown other kind of prion that affects a different protein, but the well-studied diseases are all misfoldings of essentially the same protein.