Mad Cow Proteins Multiply in Tissue – Prions Found in Muscles of Lab Mice
By David Periman – Chronicle Science Editor
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Prions, the proteins that cause mad cow disease have recently been detected multiplying in the muscle tissue of lab mice.
Most animals, including humans normally carry these newly labeled prions in their bodies with no ill effects. Prions are composed of amino acids in a spherical strand, which contain no genes. For some reasons, sometimes these amino acids can go through a conformational change, which creates a new sheet-like structure. These sheets pile upon one another creating a pathology, similar to and with the effects of infectious bacteria and viruses.
This work is being done by Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner, at UCSF. Pruisner’s team has found that prions are multiplied in and accumulate in the sleletal muscle of genetically engineer lab mice. Normal mice do not show these ill effects because of their lifespan is too short, or conversely, the incubation of the disease is too long. The mice thus must be created to become infected quickly. The article does not describe how this is done, and I suspect there may be other underlying questionable aspects of the research due to this genetic engineering.
Prions have been found to be detrimental to humans and animals alike, in other fashions. Prions are responsible for a new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which has been linked to mad cow disease in Britain. No occurrence of the Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, or of mad cow disease has been reported in the US. Prions have been responsible for bovine spongiform disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk. In cattle, BSE targets the brain, spinal cord, and lymph system. The article does not describe how.
Although the article is not as in depth as I would hope, it does raise awareness on the issue of mad cow disease and it’s infection. I wish the article could have explained how the mice in the lab were altered, and how the disease affected the nervous and lymph systems.
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