Prions and amyloids are often associated with disease, but related mechanisms provide beneficial functions in nature. Prion-like mechanisms (PriLiMs) are found from bacteria to humans, where they alter the biological and physical properties of prion-like proteins. We have proposed that prions can serve as heritable bet-hedging devices for diversifying microbial phenotypes. Other, more dynamic p...

Various clinical and epidemiological data have suggested the possibility of infectious mechanisms in schizophrenia. In addition, lengthy prodromal psychiatric symptoms can presage the development of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a prototypical prion disorder. Accordingly, the presence of human protease resistant prion proteins (PrP) was assessed in postmortem frontal cortical and thalamic tissues ...

Various clinical and epidemiological data have suggested the possibility of infectious mechanisms in schizophrenia. In addition, lengthy prodromal psychiatric symptoms can presage the development of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a prototypical prion disorder. Accordingly, the presence of human protease resistant prion proteins (PrPres) was assessed in postmortem frontal cortical and thalamic tissu...

Yeast prions are heritable amyloid aggregates of functional yeast proteins; their propagation to subsequent cell generations is dependent upon fragmentation of prion protein aggregates by molecular chaperone proteins. Mounting evidence indicates the J-protein Sis1 may act as an amyloid specificity factor, recognizing prion and other amyloid aggregates and enabling Ssa and Hsp104 to act in prion...

Prions are unprecedented infectious pathogens that cause a group of invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease by an entirely novel mechanism. The conformational change in prion proteins results in a change from a predominantly α-helical protein to a β-sheet form, which causes scrapie in sheep and goat. The present study was carried out to identify polymorphisms of the prion protein gene (PrP) ...

Infectious proteins (prions) can arise de novo as well as by transmission from another individual. De novo prion generation is believed responsible for most cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and for initiating the mad cow disease epidemic. However, the cellular components needed for prion generation have not been identified in any system. The [URE3] prion of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an infe...

Efficiency of interspecies prion transmission decreases as the primary structures of the infectious proteins diverge. Yet, a single prion protein can misfold into multiple infectious conformations, and such differences in "strain conformation" also alter infection specificity. Here, we explored the relationship between prion strains and species barriers by creating distinct synthetic prion form...

The number of known fungal proteins capable of switching between alternative stable conformations is steadily increasing, suggesting that a prion-like mechanism may be broadly utilized as a means to propagate altered cellular states. To gain insight into the mechanisms by which cells regulate prion formation and toxicity we examined the role of the yeast ribosome-associated complex (RAC) in mod...

Prions were originally defined as infectious agents of protein nature, which caused neurodegenerative diseases in animals and humans. The prion concept implies that the infectious agent is a protein in special conformation that can be transmitted to the normal molecules of the same protein through protein–protein interactions. Until the 1990s, the prion phenomenon was associated with the single...