title: Thoughts on mammalian prion strains.
abstract: A plethora of prion strains can be propagated indefinitely in hosts homozygous for the PrP gene. Within the framework of the "protein-only" hypothesis, the strain-specific properties are enciphered in the conformation of the strain-associated PrPSc. Are these conformations codetermined by additional components, whose presence or absence within an infected cell could define the cell's competence to replicate a particular strain? Which cellular components, if any, contribute to the PrPC-to-PrPSc conversion in the cell? Many questions still remain to be answered in the field launched and nurtured by Carlton Gajdusek, to whom this essay is dedicated.
authors.affiliation: Department of Infectology, Scripps Florida, 130 Scripps Way, Jupiter , FL 33458, USA. charlesw@scripps.edu
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Weissmann
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D011328:Prions / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics*; D011487:Protein Conformation
chemical_list: D011328:Prions