Five questions on prion diseases.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Aguzzi A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3342938 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:The structural basis of species specificity of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or "mad cow disease" and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, has been investigated using the refined NMR structure of the C-terminal domain of the mouse prion protein with residues 121-231. A database search for mammalian prion proteins yielded 23 different sequences for the fragment 124-226, which display a high degree of sequence identity and show relevant amino acid substitutions in only 18 of the 103 positions. Except for a unique isolated negative surface charge in the bovine protein, the amino acid differences are clustered in three distinct regions of the three-dimensional structure of the cellular form of the prion protein. Two of these regions represent potential species-dependent surface recognition sites for protein-protein interactions, which have independently been implicated from in vitro and in vivo studies of prion protein transformation. The third region consists of a cluster of interior hydrophobic side chains that may affect prion protein transformation at later stages, after initial conformational changes in the cellular protein.
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