Innovation Anthology #286:
Prion researchers have discovered that soil plays an important role in the transmission of chronic wasting disease among deer in the wild.
Dr. Judd Aiken is with the Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases at the University of Alberta.
According to Dr. Aiken, infected deer shed the prions in fecal matter and saliva. They also consume a lot of dirt, for minerals and when grazing. He wanted to know if these prions would stay in the soil or pass into the water table.
DR: JUDD AIKEN: What we found was that prions bound very, very tightly to, montmorillonite clay and very difficult to remove an infectious agent when its bound to the clay. The interesting thing and I guessed wrong on this when we started these experiments, – the interesting thing, is this tight binding actually enhanced the infectivity and made the prions more infectious. We’ve looked at soil minerals, we’ve looked at whole soils, and in all cases, we get an enhancement, a significant enhancement, roughly 700 fold enhancement of infectivity.
Dr. Aiken says these infected prions can persist in the soil for years, and possibly decades. But its significance still needs investigation.
Thanks today to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
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Sponsor
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Program Date: 2010-01-26