Molecular hybridization studies with scrapie brain nucleic acids. II. Differential expression in scrapie hamster brain.

RNA and DNA fractions prepared from nucleic acids obtained from normal and scrapie-infected hamster brains following exhaustive treatment with nuclease were used as probes in a search for a specific scrapie nucleic acid. Employing RNA blot hybridization a 2.3 Kb RNA was detected in higher concentration in scrapie-infected hamster brains than in normal controls. Our data suggests that scrapie disease may be associated with the differential expression of a series of host genes.