Darwinian Evolution of Prions in Cell Culture

✍ Scribed by Browning, S.; Mahal, S. P.; Oelschlegel, A. M.; Weissmann, C.; Li, J.

• Book ID: 111981898
• Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 495 KB
• Volume: 327
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0036-8075
• DOI: 10.1126/science.1183218

✦ Synopsis

DNA-less Evolution

Prions are proteinaceous infectious elements involved in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, including scrapie in sheep and so-called mad cow disease in cattle. Now
Li
et al.
(p.
869
, published online 31 December) show that, when propagated in tissue culture cells, cloned prion populations become diverse by mutational events and can undergo selective amplification. Thus, even though devoid of a coding genome, prions, when propagated under a particular selection regime, can be subject to rapid evolution.