title: [From the Scrapie syndrome of sheep and goat to the mad cow disease - the history of the discovery of prion].
abstract: Since the discovery of Scrapie Syndrome in sheep and goats in 1730, there emerged a series of diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, kuru disease and mad cow disease etc. In the research of kuru disease, the American scientist D. Carlteton Gajdusek found a new virus without the characteristic of DNA and RNA, which was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1976. Since then another American scientist, Stanley B. Prusiner, found a new virus-prion, taking protein as the genetic medium, which was awarded the Nobel prize in physiology and medicine in 1997. The discovery of prion is a great landmark in the research of life science, which laid a theoretical foundation for people to conquer a series of diseases such as Scrapie syndrome in sheep and goats, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, kuru disease and mad cow disease etc.
authors.affiliation: The Department of Scientific History and Archaeology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Weng
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle; D016643:Encephalopathy, Bovine Spongiform / Q000266:history*; D015511:Goat Diseases / Q000266:history; D006041:Goats; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D017096:Prion Diseases / Q000266:history*; D011328:Prions / Q000266:history*; D012608:Scrapie / Q000266:history*; D012756:Sheep; D014481:United States
chemical_list: D011328:Prions