THE bizarre shape-changing proteins known as prions, infamous for their role
in diseases such as BSE, may be common and often beneficial, say biologists in
the US.
“When people hear `prion’ they automatically think of diseases,” says Susan
Lindquist of the University of Chicago. “But these results argue that prions are
a novel way to control proteins.”
Prions have had an image problem ever since Stanley Prusiner at the
University of California, San Francisco, first proposed their existence.
Prusiner suggested that a brain protein called PrP causes diseases like BSE when
it changes shape.
PrP is found on the surface…
