Seeds of dementia.

• Autores: Lary C. Walker, Mathias Jucker
• Localización: Scientific American, ISSN 0036-8733, Vol. 308, Nº. 5, 2013, págs. 52-57
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The article discusses how a chain reaction of toxic proteins may help explain neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parksinson's, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Topics include an overview of proteinaceous infectious particle (PrP), called prions, research in the 1980s by Stanley B. Prusiner of the University of California, San Francisco that provided evidence that an infectious agent responsible for the animal diseases, called spongiform encephalopathies, led to the misfolding of a protein called PrP, and the impact of knowledge about how proteins fold into a form that causes others to undergo similar transformations on the prevention and treatment of neurological illnesses.