Premium
Florid plaques in ovine PrP transgenic mice infected with an experimental ovine BSE
Author(s) -
Crozet Carole,
Bencsik Anna,
Flamant Frédéric,
Lezmi Stéphane,
Samarut Jacques,
Baron Thierry
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
embo reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.584
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1469-3178
pISSN - 1469-221X
DOI - 10.1093/embo-reports/kve204
Subject(s) - bovine spongiform encephalopathy , scrapie , genetically modified mouse , virology , biology , transgene , disease , transmissible spongiform encephalopathy , chronic wasting disease , prion protein , pathology , medicine , gene , genetics
The occurrence of the variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD), related to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), raises the important question of the sources of human contamination. The possibility that sheep may have been fed with BSE‐contaminated foodstuff raises the serious concern that BSE may now be present in sheep without being distinguishable from scrapie. Sensitive models are urgently needed given the dramatic consequences of such a possible contamination on animal and human health. We inoculated transgenic mice expressing the ovine PrP gene with a brain homogenate from sheep experimentally infected with BSE. We found numerous typical florid plaques in their brains. Such florid plaques are a feature of vCJD in humans and experimental BSE infection in macaques. Our observation represents the first description, after a primary infection, of this hallmark in a transgenic mouse model. Moreover, these mice appear to be a promising tool in the search for BSE in sheep.