NR ABUE
AU Brown,P.; Rau,E.H.; Johnson,B.K.; Bacote,A.E.; Gibbs,C.J.Jr.; Gajdusek,D.C.
TI New studies on the heat resistance of hamster-adapted scrapie agent: threshold survival after ashing at 600° suggests an inorganic template of replication.
QU Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2000 Mar 28; 97(7): 3418-21
IA http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/7/3418
PT journal article
AB One-gram samples from a pool of crude brain tissue from hamsters infected with the 263K strain of hamster-adapted scrapie agent were placed in covered quartz-glass crucibles and exposed for either 5 or 15 min to dry heat at temperatures ranging from 150 degrees C to 1,000 degrees C. Residual infectivity in the treated samples was assayed by the intracerebral inoculation of dilution series into healthy weanling hamsters, which were observed for 10 months; disease transmissions were verified by Western blot testing for proteinase-resistant protein in brains from clinically positive hamsters. Unheated control tissue contained 9.9 log(10)LD(50)/g tissue; after exposure to 150 degrees C, titers equaled or exceeded 6 log(10)LD(50)/g, and after exposure to 300 degrees C, titers equaled or exceeded 4 log(10)LD(50)/g. Exposure to 600 degrees C completely ashed the brain samples, which, when reconstituted with saline to their original weights, transmitted disease to 5 of 35 inoculated hamsters. No transmissions occurred after exposure to 1,000 degrees C. These results suggest that an inorganic molecular template with a decomposition point near 600 degrees C is capable of nucleating the biological replication of the scrapie agent.
MH Animal; Blotting, Western; Brain/metabolism; Female; Hamsters; *Heat; Mesocricetus; PrPsc Proteins/*biosynthesis; Scrapie/transmission
AD Paul Brown (brownp@ninds.nih.gov), Laboratory of Central Nervous System Studies, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
SP englisch
PO USA
EA pdf-Datei und HTML-Version