Hill A F, Sidle K C, Joiner S, Keyes P, Martin T C, Dawson M, Collinge J
Department of Neurogenetics, Imperial College School of Medicine at St. Mary's, London, UK.
Neurosci Lett. 1998 Oct 23;255(3):159-62. doi: 10.1016/s0304-3940(98)00736-8.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) may have transmitted to sheep through feed and pose a risk to human health. Sheep BSE cannot be clinically distinguished from scrapie, and conventional strain typing would be impractical on a significant scale. As human prion strains can be distinguished by differences in prion protein (PrPsc) conformation and glycosylation we have applied PrP(Sc) typing to sheep. We found multiple Western blot patterns of PrP(Sc) in scrapie, consistent with the known scrapie strain diversity in sheep. Sheep passaged BSE showed a PrP(Sc) banding pattern similar to BSE passaged in other species [Collinge, J., Sidle, K.C.L., Meads, J., Ironside, J. and Hill, A.F., Nature, 383 (1996) 685-690], both in terms of fragment size following proteinase K cleavage and abundance of diglycosylated PrP. However, none of the historical or contemporary scrapie cases studied had a PrP(Sc) type identical to sheep BSE. While more extensive studies, including sheep of all PrP genotypes, will be required to fully evaluate these findings, these results suggest that large scale screening of sheep for BSE may be possible.
牛海绵状脑病（BSE）可能通过饲料传播给绵羊，并对人类健康构成风险。绵羊BSE在临床上无法与羊瘙痒病区分开来，大规模进行传统毒株分型不切实际。由于人类朊病毒毒株可通过朊病毒蛋白（PrPsc）构象和糖基化的差异来区分，我们已将PrP(Sc)分型应用于绵羊。我们在羊瘙痒病中发现了PrP(Sc)的多种蛋白质印迹模式，这与绵羊中已知的羊瘙痒病毒株多样性一致。绵羊传代的BSE显示出与在其他物种中传代的BSE相似的PrP(Sc)条带模式[科林奇，J.，西德尔，K.C.L.，米兹，J.，艾恩赛德，J.和希尔，A.F.，《自然》，383（1996）685 - 690]，无论是在蛋白酶K切割后的片段大小还是二糖基化PrP的丰度方面。然而，所研究的历史或当代羊瘙痒病病例中，没有一例的PrP(Sc)类型与绵羊BSE相同。虽然需要进行更广泛的研究，包括所有PrP基因型的绵羊，以全面评估这些发现，但这些结果表明对绵羊进行BSE大规模筛查可能是可行的。
