title: Prion diseases.
abstract: There have been remarkably rapid advances in the understanding of prion diseases over the past year. The controversial notion that the transmissible agent may be an abnormal isoform of a host-encoded protein, the prion protein, is now gaining wide acceptance. The conundrum of how a disease can both be inherited as an autosomal dominant condition and also be experimentally transmissible by inoculation is beginning to make sense.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, St Mary's Hospital Medical School, London, UK.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Collinge
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Palmer
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D011328:Prions / Q000096:biosynthesis / Q000737:chemistry; D012897:Slow Virus Diseases / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D011328:Prions