Deadly folding mistake: Molecular mechanism of prion protein oligomerization at atomic resolution
Friday, August 16, 2013 - 08:01
in Health & Medicine
(Phys.org) —Mad cow disease and its cousin Creutzfeld-Jakob disease cause fatal spongy changes in brain tissue. Today, we know that these diseases are caused by prions, proteins that are folded incorrectly. A team of German researchers have now been able to follow how the diseased proteins aggregate and "infect" healthy ones on the atomic scale. Their report appears in the journal Angewandte Chemie.