In animals the prion disease includes sheep and goat scrapie and the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). While several polymorphisms of the prion (PRNP) gene have been identified in sheep and some of them have been associated with susceptibility to scrapie, few mutations are reported in cattle and no correlation with BSE have been demonstrated. Genetic screening for mutants in the PRNP gene...

Mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) IIIB is a devastating neuropathic lysosomal storage disease with complex pathology. This study identifies molecular signatures in peripheral blood that may be relevant to MPS IIIB pathogenesis using a mouse model. Genome-wide gene expression microarrays on pooled RNAs showed dysregulation of 2,802 transcripts in blood from MPS IIIB mice, reflecting pathological compl...

The PrP protein is central to the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), and the amino acid sequence of this protein in the host can influence both incubation time of disease and targeting of disease pathology. The N terminus of murine PrP has been proposed to be important in the replication of TSE agents, as mutations or deletions in that region can alter the efficiency of agent rep...

Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker Disease (GSS) is a familial neurodegenerative disorder characterized clinically by ataxia, parkinsonism, and dementia, and neuropathologically by deposition of diffuse and amyloid plaques composed of prion protein (PrP). The purpose of this study was to evaluate if [(11)C]Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB) positron emission tomography (PET) is capable of detecting PrP-am...

Human cognitive processes are highly variable across individuals and are influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Although genetic variations affect short-term memory in humans, it is unknown whether genetic variability has also an impact on long-term memory. Because prion-like conformational changes may be involved in the induction of long-lasting synaptic plasticity, we examined ...

Prion neuroinvasion is accompanied by maximal activation of microglia, the significance of which for pathogenesis is unknown. Here, we used bone marrow (BM) cells expressing GFP (green fluorescent protein) to study the turnover of microglia in mouse scrapie. We found that >or=50% of all brain microglia were replaced by BM-derived cells before clinical disease onset. In terminally sick mice, mic...

BACKGROUND Scrapie is the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy in sheep. Because genetic variants of the ovine PrP gene (PRNP) can be associated with disease risk, the European Union initiated programs to eradicate high-risk PRNP genotypes from sheep livestock. For this purpose, reliable and cost-effective genotyping is needed. METHODS We amplified DNA to cover the 3 risk codons in exon 3 ...

BACKGROUND The putative functions of the cellular prion protein (PrP(c)) are believed to be associated with cell signaling, differentiation, survival, and cancer progression. With respect to cancer development and progression, elevations and mutations of PrP(c) expression have been shown to increase the risk for malignancy and metastasis in breast and colorectal cancer. Since both natural suppl...

Clinical and pathological changes in familial Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) cases may be similar or indistinguishable from sporadic CJD. Therefore determination of novel mutations in PRNP remains of major importance. We identified two different rare mutations in codon 188 of the prion protein gene (PRNP) in four patients suffering from a disease clinically very similar to the major subtype of...