Innovation Anthology #216:
Another step forward in understanding what causes prion diseases like mad cow is the recent discovery of the shadoo protein.
According to Dr. David Westaway of the Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases at the University of Alberta, its existence was confirmed by a student in Westaway’s lab. He showed that shadoo is abundant in the brain and has a lot of features similar to normal prion proteins.
DR. DAVID WESTAWAY: We think that they may be part of a family of a molecules on the surface of brain cells that help brain cells deal with damage. We have looked at what happens to the shadoo protein in an animal that has a prion disease and we were very surprised to get a very simple answer, that the shadoo protein starts to disappear In one sense the fact that the shadoo protein disappears when animals are replicating prions, it sort of is what we call a tracer. We didn’t expect to make this discovery, but somehow when the protein is disappearing, it’s telling you that prions are replicating.
Dr. Westaway speculates this may be related to yet another class of proteins called proteazes which function as a waste disposal team.
Thanks today to the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY,
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Program Date: 2009-04-14