A PRIORI PRIONS
| Autor: | Aalok Mehita |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2004 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Chemical & Engineering News Archive. 82:8 |
| ISSN: | 2157-4936 0009-2347 |
| DOI: | 10.1021/cen-v082n013.p008a |
| Popis: | RESEARCHERS WORKING WITH yeast have isolated two separate protein domains necessary for prion behavior—one responsible for growth, the other for inheritance —and used them to synthesize artificial yeast prions from scratch. Biochemist Lev Z. Osherovich and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Kent, in England, discovered the domains while conducting molecular biology studies on two naturally occurring yeast prions [ PLoS Biol. , published online March 23, http:// dx.doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pbio.00200 86]. Osherovich's team found that a glutamine/asparagine-rich region allows yeast prions to aggregate and grow, but a separate conserved oligopeptide repeat sequence is needed for them to pass their traits on to future generations. Osherovich postulates that the oligopeptide repeats provide binding sites for chaperone proteins, which are known to cleave aggregates into small, inheritable fragments. The findings help distinguish proteins that merely aggregate—formin... |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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