| Type: | Family | Name: | Prion protein |
| Description: | Prion protein (PrP-c) [, , ] is a small glycoprotein found in high quantity in the brain of animals infected with certain degenerative neurological diseases, such as sheep scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), and the human dementias Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD) and Gerstmann-Straussler syndrome (GSS). PrP-c is encoded in the host genome and is expressed both in normal and infected cells. During infection, however, the PrP-c molecule become altered (conformationally rather than at the amino acid level) to an abnormal isoform, PrP-sc. In detergent-treated brain extracts from infected individuals, fibrils composed of polymers of PrP-sc, namely scrapie-associated fibrils or prion rods, can be evidenced by electron microscopy. The precise function of the normal PrP isoform in healthy individuals remains unknown. Several results, mainly obtained in transgenic animals, indicate that PrP-cmight play a role in long-term potentiation, in sleep physiology, in oxidative burst compensation (PrP can fix four Cu2+ through its octarepeat domain), in interactions with the extracellular matrix (PrP-c can bind to the precursor of the laminin receptor, LRP), in apoptosis and in signal transduction (costimulation ofPrP-c induces a modulation of Fyn kinase phosphorylation) [].The normal isoform, PrP-c, is anchored at the cell membrane, in rafts, through a glycosyl phosphatidyl inositol (GPI); its half-life at the cell surface is 5 h, after which the protein is internalised through a caveolae-dependent mechanism and degraded in the endolysosome compartment. Conversion between PrP-c and PrP-scoccurs likely during the internalisation process. In humans, PrP is a 253 amino acid protein, which has a molecular weight of 35-36 kDa. It has two hexapeptides and repeated octapeptides at the N terminus, a disulphide bond and is associated at the C terminus with a GPI, which enables it to anchor to the external part of thecell membrane. The secondary structure of PrP-c is mainly composed of alpha-helices, whereas PrP-sc is mainly beta-sheets: transconformation of alpha-helices into beta-sheets has been proposed as the structural basis by which PrP acquires pathogenicity in TSEs. The three-dimensional structures shows the protein to be made of a globular domain which includes three alpha-helices and two small antiparallel beta-sheetstructures, and a long flexible tail whose conformation depends on the biophysical parameters of the environment. Crystals of the globular domain of PrP have recently been obtained; their analysis suggests a possible dimerisation of the protein through the three-dimensional swapping of the C-terminal helix 3 andrearrangement of the disulphide bond. | Short Name: | Prion |
