The shape of things to come: structural insights into how prion proteins encipher heritable information.
editorial · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35831278.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-31460-8 and PMC identifier 9279361.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The prion hypothesis embodies the radical concept that prion proteins contain the necessary information for infectious replication within their shape, thus obviating the requirement for genomic material. Two elegant papers by Hoyt et al. and Manka et al. describing high-resolution structures of infectious prions bring us closer to answering the long-standing question of how different prion conformations produce heritably distinct diseases.
Medical subject headings
- Prion Diseases
- Prions