Institut für Physikalische Biologie, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, 40204 Düsseldorf, Germany.
Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
Viruses. 2024 Feb 26;16(3):360. doi: 10.3390/v16030360.
Theodor ("Ted") Otto Diener (* 28 February 1921 in Zürich, Switzerland; † 28 March 2023 in Beltsville, MD, USA) pioneered research on viroids while working at the Plant Virology Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, USDA, in Beltsville. He coined the name viroid and defined viroids' important features like the infectivity of naked single-stranded RNA without protein-coding capacity. During scientific meetings in the 1970s and 1980s, viroids were often discussed at conferences together with other "subviral pathogens". This term includes what are now called satellite RNAs and prions. Satellite RNAs depend on a helper virus and have linear or, in the case of virusoids, circular RNA genomes. Prions, proteinaceous infectious particles, are the agents of scrapie, kuru and some other diseases. Many satellite RNAs, like viroids, are non-coding and exert their function by thermodynamically or kinetically controlled folding, while prions are solely host-encoded proteins that cause disease by misfolding, aggregation and transmission of their conformations into infectious prion isoforms. In this memorial, we will recall the work of Ted Diener on subviral pathogens.
西奥多（“泰德”）·奥托·迪纳（Theodor ("Ted") Otto Diener）*1921 年 2 月 28 日生于瑞士苏黎世；†2023 年 3 月 28 日卒于美国马里兰州贝尔茨维尔）在位于贝尔茨维尔的美国农业部农业研究署植物病毒学实验室工作期间，开创了类病毒研究。他创造了类病毒（viroid）一词，并定义了类病毒的重要特征，如无编码蛋白能力的裸露单链 RNA 的感染性。在 20 世纪 70 年代和 80 年代的科学会议上，类病毒经常与其他“亚病毒病原体”一起在会议上讨论。这一术语包括现在被称为卫星 RNA 和朊病毒的物质。卫星 RNA 依赖辅助病毒，具有线性或病毒样的圆形 RNA 基因组。朊病毒是蛋白质传染性颗粒，是羊瘙痒病、库鲁病和其他一些疾病的病原体。许多卫星 RNA 与类病毒一样，是非编码的，通过热力学或动力学控制折叠发挥其功能，而朊病毒则是仅由宿主编码的蛋白质，通过错误折叠、聚集和将其构象传递到传染性朊病毒异构体而引起疾病。在这篇纪念文章中，我们将回顾泰德·迪纳关于亚病毒病原体的工作。
