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Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy ‐ Some Surprises for Biochemists
Author(s) -
Campbell Peter N.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
iubmb life
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.132
H-Index - 113
eISSN - 1521-6551
pISSN - 1521-6543
DOI - 10.1080/15216540500097152
Subject(s) - bovine spongiform encephalopathy , scrapie , surprise , kuru , virology , prion proteins , prion protein , disease , medicine , biology , pathology , psychology , communication
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is typical of the dementias that affect both animals and man; Scrapie in sheep, Creutzfeldt‐Jakob disease in man. Global efforts have been made to determine the nature of the active agents in these diseases. At present the 'protein only hypothesis' of Prusiner holds. It was a surprise that a protein could per se be the active agent but other surprises for our traditional teaching of biochemistry arose. These are explained in a brief summary of our present understanding of the biochemistry of the active agents that cause the diseases.IUBMB Life, 57: 273‐276, 2005