http://www.journalofparkinsonsdiseas...mans_Blog.html

17 JULY 2013

Brain Strains

Sometimes good proteins go bad. They change their shapes - from a soluble alpha helical conformation to an insoluble beta sheet one - stick to other proteins, and form fibrils that grow into clumps. Along the way cells die. When proteins slip into this so-called “amyloid” state they frequently cause disease. Devastating examples of pathogenic amyloids include tau and amyloid-β (Alzheimer’s disease), alpha synuclein (Parkinson’s disease), huntingtin (Huntington’s disease), superoxide dismutase (amytrophic lateral sclerosis) and PrPSc (the protein behind the prion diseases-e.g.bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), scrapie, kuru, Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD), fatal familial insomnia, and Gertsmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease).