HOME



picture info

Major Prion Protein
The major prion protein (PrP) is encoded in the human body by the ''PRNP'' gene also known as CD230 (cluster of differentiation 230). Expression of the protein is most predominant in the nervous system but occurs in many other tissues throughout the body. The protein can exist in multiple isoforms: the normal PrPC form, and the protease-resistant form designated PrPRes such as the disease-causing PrPSc (scrapie) and an isoform located in mitochondria. The misfolded version PrPSc is associated with a variety of cognitive disorders and neurodegenerative diseases such as in animals: ovine scrapie, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, mad cow disease), feline spongiform encephalopathy, transmissible mink encephalopathy (TME), exotic ungulate encephalopathy, chronic wasting disease (CWD) which affects deer; and in humans: Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), fatal familial insomnia (FFI), Gerstmann–Sträussler–Scheinker syndrome (GSS), kuru, and variant Creutzfeldt–Jak ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Prion
A prion () is a Proteinopathy, misfolded protein that induces misfolding in normal variants of the same protein, leading to cellular death. Prions are responsible for prion diseases, known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSEs), which are fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases affecting both humans and animals. These proteins can misfold sporadically, due to genetic mutations, or by exposure to an already misfolded protein, leading to an abnormal Protein tertiary structure, three-dimensional structure that can propagate misfolding in other proteins. The term ''prion'' comes from "proteinaceous infectious particle". Unlike other infectious agents such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi, prions do not contain nucleic acids (DNA or RNA). Prions are mainly twisted Protein isoform, isoforms of the major prion protein (PrP), a naturally occurring protein with an uncertain function. They are the hypothesized cause of various transmissible spongiform encephalopath ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Chronic Wasting Disease
Chronic wasting disease (CWD), sometimes called zombie deer disease, is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) affecting deer. TSEs are a family of diseases thought to be caused by misfolded proteins called prions and include similar diseases such as BSE (mad cow disease) in cattle, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, and scrapie in sheep. Natural infection causing CWD affects members of the deer family. In the United States, CWD affects mule deer, white-tailed deer, red deer, sika deer, elk, bison, antelope, caribou, and moose. The transmission of CWD to other species such as squirrel monkeys and humanized mice has been observed in experimental settings. In 1967, CWD was first identified in mule deer at a government research facility in northern Colorado, United States. It was initially recognized as a clinical "wasting" syndrome and then in 1978, it was identified more specifically as a TSE disease. Since then, CWD has been found in free-rang ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Beta Sheet
The beta sheet (β-sheet, also β-pleated sheet) is a common motif of the regular protein secondary structure. Beta sheets consist of beta strands (β-strands) connected laterally by at least two or three backbone hydrogen bonds, forming a generally twisted, pleated sheet. A β-strand is a stretch of polypeptide chain typically 3 to 10 amino acids long with backbone in an extended conformation. The supramolecular association of β-sheets has been implicated in the formation of the fibrils and protein aggregates observed in amyloidosis, Alzheimer's disease and other proteinopathies. History The first β-sheet structure was proposed by William Astbury in the 1930s. He proposed the idea of hydrogen bonding between the peptide bonds of parallel or antiparallel extended β-strands. However, Astbury did not have the necessary data on the bond geometry of the amino acids in order to build accurate models, especially since he did not then know that the peptide bond was planar. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Antiparallel (biochemistry)
In biochemistry, two biopolymers are antiparallel if they run parallel (geometry), parallel to each other but with opposite directionality (molecular biology), directionality (alignments). An example is the two complementarity (molecular biology), complementary strands of a DNA nucleic acid double helix, double helix, which antiparallel vectors, run in opposite directions alongside each other. Nucleic acids Nucleic acid molecules have a phosphoryl (5') end and a hydroxyl (3') end. This notation follows from IUPAC nomenclature of organic chemistry, organic chemistry nomenclature, and can be used to define the movement of enzymes such as DNA polymerases relative to the DNA strand in a non-arbitrary manner. G-quadruplexes G-quadruplexes, also known as G4 DNA are secondary structures found in nucleic acids that are rich in guanine. These structures are normally located at the telomeres (the ends of the Chromosome, chromosomes). The G-quadruplex can either be parallel or antiparallel ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Alpha Helix
An alpha helix (or α-helix) is a sequence of amino acids in a protein that are twisted into a coil (a helix). The alpha helix is the most common structural arrangement in the Protein secondary structure, secondary structure of proteins. It is also the most extreme type of local structure, and it is the local structure that is most easily predicted from a sequence of amino acids. The alpha helix has a right-handed helix conformation in which every backbone amino, N−H group hydrogen bonds to the backbone carbonyl, C=O group of the amino acid that is four residue (biochemistry), residues earlier in the protein sequence. Other names The alpha helix is also commonly called a: * Pauling–Corey–Branson α-helix (from the names of three scientists who described its structure) * 3.613-helix because there are 3.6 amino acids in one ring, with 13 atoms being involved in the ring formed by the hydrogen bond (starting with amidic hydrogen and ending with carbonyl oxygen) Discovery ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Peptide Sequence
Peptides are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. A polypeptide is a longer, continuous, unbranched peptide chain. Polypeptides that have a molecular mass of 10,000 Da or more are called proteins. Chains of fewer than twenty amino acids are called oligopeptides, and include dipeptides, tripeptides, and tetrapeptides. Peptides fall under the broad chemical classes of biological polymers and oligomers, alongside nucleic acids, oligosaccharides, polysaccharides, and others. Proteins consist of one or more polypeptides arranged in a biologically functional way, often bound to ligands such as coenzymes and cofactors, to another protein or other macromolecule such as DNA or RNA, or to complex macromolecular assemblies. Amino acids that have been incorporated into peptides are termed residues. A water molecule is released during formation of each amide bond.. All peptides except cyclic peptides have an N-terminal (amine group) and C-terminal (carboxyl group) resid ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Base Pair
A base pair (bp) is a fundamental unit of double-stranded nucleic acids consisting of two nucleobases bound to each other by hydrogen bonds. They form the building blocks of the DNA double helix and contribute to the folded structure of both DNA and RNA. Dictated by specific hydrogen bonding patterns, "Watson–Crick" (or "Watson–Crick–Franklin") base pairs (guanine–cytosine and adenine–thymine) allow the DNA helix to maintain a regular helical structure that is subtly dependent on its nucleotide sequence. The Complementarity (molecular biology), complementary nature of this based-paired structure provides a Redundancy (information theory), redundant copy of the genetic information encoded within each strand of DNA. The regular structure and data redundancy provided by the DNA double helix make DNA well suited to the storage of genetic information, while base-pairing between DNA and incoming nucleotides provides the mechanism through which DNA polymerase replicates DNA and ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Chromosome 20 (human)
Chromosome 20 is one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in humans. Chromosome 20 spans around 66 million base pairs (the building material of DNA) and represents between 2 and 2.5 percent of the total DNA in cells. Chromosome 20 was fully sequenced in 2001 and was reported to contain over 59 million base pairs. Since then, due to sequencing improvements and fixes, the length of chromosome 20 has been updated to just over 66 million base pairs. Genes Number of genes The following are some of the gene count estimates of human chromosome 20. Because researchers use different approaches to genome annotation their predictions of the number of genes on each chromosome varies (for technical details, see gene prediction). Among various projects, the collaborative consensus coding sequence project ( CCDS) takes an extremely conservative strategy. So CCDS's gene number prediction represents a lower bound on the total number of human protein-coding genes. Gene list The following is a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Location Of PRNP-gene In Chromosome 20
In geography, location or place is used to denote a region (point, line, or area) on Earth's surface. The term ''location'' generally implies a higher degree of certainty than ''place'', the latter often indicating an entity with an ambiguous boundary, relying more on human or social attributes of place identity and sense of place than on geometry. A populated place is called a ''settlement''. Types Locality A locality, settlement, or populated place is likely to have a well-defined name but a boundary that is not well defined, but rather varies by context. London, for instance, has a legal boundary, but this is unlikely to completely match with general usage. An area within a town, such as Covent Garden in London, also almost always has some ambiguity as to its extent. In geography, location is considered to be more precise than "place". Relative location A relative location, or situation, is described as a displacement from another site. gta6 Absolute location An absolute loc ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease
Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD), formerly known as new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (nvCJD) and referred to colloquially as "mad cow disease" or "human mad cow disease" to distinguish it from its BSE counterpart, is a fatal type of brain disease within the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy family. Initial symptoms include psychiatric problems, behavioral changes, and painful sensations. In the later stages of the illness, patients may exhibit poor coordination, dementia and involuntary movements. The length of time between exposure and the development of symptoms is unclear, but is believed to be years to decades. Average life expectancy following the onset of symptoms is 13 months. It is caused by prions, which are misfolded proteins. Spread is believed to be primarily due to eating beef infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Infection is also believed to require a specific genetic susceptibility. Spread may potentially also occu ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Kuru (disease)
Kuru was a rare, incurable, and fatal Neurological disorder, neurodegenerative disorder that was formerly common among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. It is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, prion disease which leads to tremors and loss of coordination from neurodegeneration. The term ''kúru'' means “trembling” and comes from the Fore language, Fore word ''kuria'' or ''guria'' ("to shake"). It is also known as "laughing sickness" due to abnormal bursts of laughter which occur. It was spread among the Fore people via Endocannibalism, funerary cannibalism. Deceased family members were traditionally cooked and eaten, which was thought to help free the spirit of the dead. Women and children usually eat the brain, where infectious prions were most concentrated, and therefore were more commonly affected. The outbreak likely started when a villager developed sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and died. When villagers ate the brain, they contracted the disease and t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Gerstmann–Sträussler–Scheinker Syndrome
Gerstmann–Sträussler–Scheinker syndrome (GSS) is an extremely rare, invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease that affects patients from 20 to 60 years in age. It is exclusively heritable, and is found in only a few families all over the world. It is, however, classified with the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) due to the causative role played by PRNP, the human prion protein. GSS was first reported by the Austrian physicians Josef Gerstmann, Ernst Sträussler and Ilya Scheinker in 1936. Familial cases are associated with autosomal-dominant inheritance. Certain symptoms are common to GSS, such as progressive ataxia, pyramidal signs, and dementia; they worsen as the disease progresses. Symptoms and signs Symptoms start with slowly developing dysarthria (difficulty speaking) and cerebellar truncal ataxia (unsteadiness) and then the progressive dementia becomes more evident. In the early stages of GSS, people with the condition may also exhibit clumsin ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]