Prion diseases are progressive, incurable and fatal neurodegenerative conditions. The term
'prion'was first nominated to express the revolutionary concept that a protein could be …

The concept of a prion as an infectious self-propagating protein isoform was initially
proposed to explain certain mammalian diseases. It is now clear that yeast also has …

Gains or losses of entire chromosomes lead to aneuploidy, a condition tolerated poorly in all
eukaryotes analyzed to date. How aneuploidy affects organismal and cellular physiology is …

Aging, defined as a decrease in reproduction rate with age, is a fundamental characteristic
of all living organisms down to bacteria. Yet we know little about the causal molecular …

A principle that has emerged from studies of protein aggregation is that proteins typically can
misfold into a range of different aggregated forms. Moreover, the phenotypic and …

Protein quality control within the cell requires the interplay of many molecular chaperones
and proteases. When this quality control system is disrupted, polypeptides follow pathways …

Abundant nonfibrillar oligomeric intermediates are a common feature of amyloid formation,
and these oligomers, rather than the final fibers, have been suggested to be the toxic …

Aberrant accumulation of misfolded proteins into amyloid deposits is a hallmark in many age-
related neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's …

Prion proteins provide a unique mode of biochemical memory through self-perpetuating
changes in protein conformation and function. They have been studied in fungi and …

Evolution depends on the manner in which genetic variation is translated into new
phenotypes. There has been much debate about whether organisms might have specific …