Publication Date:
1981-12-11
Description:
The scrapie agent causes a degenerative nervous system disease in sheep and goats. Studies with extensively purified preparations demonstrated that the agent contains a protein that is required for infectivity. Chemical modification of the scrapie agent by diethyl pyrocarbonate reduced the titer 1000-fold. Exposure of the inactivated agent to hydroxylamine, a strong nucleophile, resulted in complete restoration of infectivity. Presumably, nucleophilic residues within a scrapie agent protein undergo carbethoxylation on reaction with diethyl pyrocarbonate, and subsequent addition of hydroxylamine displaces these carbethoxy groups.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉McKinley, M P -- Masiarz, F R -- Prusiner, S B -- NS14069/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1981 Dec 11;214(4526):1259-61.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6795721" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Biological Assay
;
Brain/microbiology
;
Chemical Phenomena
;
Chemistry
;
Cricetinae
;
Diethyl Pyrocarbonate/pharmacology
;
Histidine/pharmacology
;
*Prions
;
Ribonucleases/pharmacology
;
Serum Albumin, Bovine/pharmacology
;
Viral Proteins/*isolation & purification/pharmacology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
