Laboratory of Biochemistry and Genetics, National Institute of Diabetes Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892-0830, United States.
Semin Cell Dev Biol. 2011 Jul;22(5):469-75. doi: 10.1016/j.semcdb.2011.02.021. Epub 2011 Feb 21.
Prion "variants" or "strains" are prions with the identical protein sequence, but different characteristics of the prion infection: e.g. different incubation periods for scrapie strains or different phenotype intensities for yeast prion variants. We have shown that infectious amyloids of the yeast prions [PSI+], [URE3] and [PIN+] each have an in-register parallel β-sheet architecture. Moreover, we have pointed out that this amyloid architecture can explain how one protein can faithfully transmit any of several conformations to new protein monomers. This explains how proteins can be genes.
朊病毒“变体”或“株系”是具有相同蛋白质序列但具有不同朊病毒感染特征的朊病毒:例如,瘙痒病株系的不同潜伏期或酵母朊病毒变体的不同表型强度。我们已经表明,酵母朊病毒[PSI+]、[URE3]和[PIN+]的传染性淀粉样蛋白都具有规则平行的β-折叠结构。此外,我们指出这种淀粉样蛋白结构可以解释一种蛋白质如何能够忠实地将几种构象之一传递给新的蛋白质单体。这解释了蛋白质如何成为基因。