title: Statistical mechanics of prion diseases.
abstract: We present a two-dimensional, lattice based, protein-level statistical mechanical model for prion diseases (e.g., mad cow disease) with concomitant prion protein misfolding and aggregation. Our studies lead us to the hypothesis that the observed broad incubation time distribution in epidemiological data reflect fluctuation dominated growth seeded by a few nanometer scale aggregates, while much narrower incubation time distributions for innoculated lab animals arise from statistical self-averaging. We model "species barriers" to prion infection and assess a related treatment protocol.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Slepoy
authors.forename: R R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Singh
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pázmándi
authors.forename: R V
authors.initials: RV
authors.lastname: Kulkarni
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Cox
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006224:Cricetinae; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D008954:Models, Biological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D017096:Prion Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000378:metabolism / Q000635:transmission; D011328:Prions / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D017510:Protein Folding
chemical_list: D011328:Prions