Prion diseases and the frame-shifting hypothesis |
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Authors: | Wills P R |
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Institution: | Department of Physics, University of Auckland, Private Bag, Auckland 1, New Zealand. |
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Abstract: | A group of neurological diseases, which includes scrapie, bovine spongiform encephalopathy and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, is caused by prion agents which appear to be comprised solely of an abnormal variant of a cellular protein, PrP. Infectious agents which contain no genetic material pose a conundrum for molecular biologists. Theoretical analysis of the gene encoding PrP has suggested a possible mechanism of replication for this proteinaceous infectious agent. The putative mechanism involves frame-shifting during translation of the PrP gene. The normal and abnormal forms of PrP are predicted to have different amino acid sequences. |
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