What drove the cow mad? Lessons from a tiny fish

Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - 06:35 in Biology & Nature

For over twenty years, scientists have known that a normal protein in the brain, PrP, or prion protein, can turn harmful and cause deadly illnesses like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle. What they could not explain is why large amounts of this normal protein are produced by our bodies in the first place. In a new study published in this week's PLoS Biology, researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany reveal that PrP indeed plays a beneficial role for the organism - PrP helps cells communicate with one another during embryonic development.

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