David R. Brown Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK In 1982 Stanley Prusiner and colleagues puri?ed an abnormal protein from the brains of mice experimentally infected with a rare sheep dis- 1 ease called scrapie . This protein was called the prion protein. Earlier work had suggested that this diseases and others, loosely collected - gether as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), were not transmitted by conventional infectious agents. Prusiner suggested that 2 this new protein was the infectious agent in these diseases . Such a contentious...
David R. Brown Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK In 1982 Stanley Prusiner and colleagues puri?ed an abnorma...