The prion's perplexing persistence

Perplexing Protein Puzzles

A perplexing rash.

To cite: Ranpara MP, Yesudian PD. BMJ Case Rep Published online: [please include Day Month Year] doi:10.1136/bcr-2015211792 DESCRIPTION A 69-year-old woman presented to the emergency department with a painful rash of 5 weeks duration. The rash started as two discrete erythematous plaques on the left medial malleolus and was treated as cellulitis by her general practitioner. Despite antibiotic t...

Perplexing peroxisome proliferators.

Soft agarose culture human tumour colony forming assay for drug sensitivity testing: [3H]-Thymidine incorporation vs colony counting Summary In vitro drug sensitivity testing, both by optical colony counting and by a [3H]-TdR incorporation assay, was performed on human tumour cells proliferating in soft agar cultures. Cells from two different human tumour cell lines, 5 different human tumour xe...

Prions.

The discovery of infectious proteins, denoted prions, was unexpected. After much debate over the chemical basis of heredity, resolution of this issue began with the discovery that DNA, not protein, from pneumococcus was capable of genetically transforming bacteria (Avery et al. 1944). Four decades later, the discovery that a protein could mimic viral and bacterial pathogens with respect to the ...

Prions.

Infectious proteins (prions) are usually self-templating filamentous protein polymers (amyloids). Yeast prions are genes composed of protein and, like the multiple alleles of DNA-based genes, can have an array of "variants," each a distinct self-propagating amyloid conformation. Like the lethal mammalian prions and amyloid diseases, yeast prions may be lethal, or only mildly detrimental, and sh...