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* * (@*) Neuroscience ( o o _ o o o | *
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* * /-------\u' Journal Club (_ .o o /' o o ______| *
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* * 66 Neurotoxicity of a 99 *
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* * Prion Protein Fragment *
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* * ( Nature 1993 Apr 8; 362 (6420): 543-6 ) *
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Dear Bionetters,
Neville Percy (Nev in Biomoo) and I (Martin) are going to present the
following paper at the next BioMOO journal club.
A short article gives some background to prions (if you want some
background info) - Neville recommends....A 'unified theory' of prion
propagation. Nature 1991 Nov 7;354(6348):25-6
We are proposing for the next journal club to be on Monday 6th June (9AM
EST - 2PM GMT)
This may be subject to change - ie the computer system goes down - mega-lag
etc..
Good luck reading the article
Nev and Martin
TI: Neurotoxicity of a prion protein fragment.
AU: Forloni-G; Angeretti-N; Chiesa-R; Monzani-E; Salmona-M; Bugiani-O;
Tagliavin
i-F
SO: Nature. 1993 Apr 8; 362(6420): 543-6
PY: 1993
LA: ENGLISH
AB: The cellular prion protein (PrPC) is a sialoglycoprotein of M(r) 33-35K
that
is expressed predominantly in neurons. In transmissible and genetic
neurodegene
rative disorders such as scrapie of sheep, spongiform encephalopathy of
cattle a
nd Creutzfeldt-Jakob or Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker diseases of humans,
PrPC
is converted into an altered form (termed PrPSc) which is distinguishable
from i
ts normal homologue by its relative resistance to protease digestion. PrPSc
accu
mulates in the central nervous system of affected individuals, and its
protease-
resistant core aggregates extracellularly into amyloid fibrils. The process
is a
ccompanied by nerve cell loss, whose pathogenesis and molecular basis are
not un
derstood. We report here that neuronal death results from chronic exposure
of pr
imary rat hippocampal cultures to micromolar concentrations of a peptide
corresp
onding to residues 106-126 of the amino-acid sequence deduced from human
PrP com
plementary DNA. DNA fragmentation of degenerating neurons indicates that
cell de
ath occurred by apoptosis. The PrP peptide 106-126 has a high intrinsic
ability
to polymerize into amyloid-like fibrils in vitro. These findings indicate
that c
erebral accumulation of PrPSc and its degradation products may
play a role in the nerve cell degeneration that occurs in related
encephalopathi
es
AN: 93218742
If you do not know how to connect to BioMOO or are just interested in this
virtual scientific community please refer to the latest issue of Science
which talks about BioMOO and gives instructions how to get there. The
Science article is:
Science - 13th May 1994, Vol. 263, pages 900-901
Martin Leach and Neville Percy
(co-organisers of this journal club)
emails: leach at mbcrr.harvard.edu or spbcnsp at ucl.ac.uk (respectively)
If you have any problems please feel free to contact either of us.
--
..... Martin Leach Email:leach at mbcrr.harvard.edu
_|____ Dept. of Pharmacology Phone: (617) 638-5323
/ o / Boston Univ. School of Med. Fax: (617) 638-4329
_/ |-/__==/ 80 E. Concord St. (L603)
(BULLDOZER) \_ Boston MA 02118 "Not the old underpants on your
USA head.....WIBBLE" -BLACKADDER
