Kuru

[Joao Vasconcelos Costa]

James C. Harrison wrote:
> 
(...)
> 
>  My question is whether the chemical composition of PrP in scrapie, BSE,
> CJD, and kuru has been compared recently-I'm not aware of any kuru
> research after about '93.
> 
The kuru prion and the CJD prion in sporadic cases are just the normal
(in terms of primary aminoacid sequence) human PrP. Mutations have only 
been found in the familial cases of CJD, GSS syndrome and familial fatal
insomnia and in only two japanese cases of sporadic CJD.
The scrapie agent and probably the BSE prion (in this case, I don't
remember if it was sequenced) have the same aminoacid sequences as the 
normal cell PrPc.
I have recently looked at the homologies between the published 
sequences. You can find the degrees of homology in another message I
posted today.
The PrP sequences can be found in the SwissProt database as prio_human,
prio_bovin, prio_sheep, prio_mouse. 

-- 
*****   JOAO VASCONCELOS COSTA, MD, PhD
*****   Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia - Oeiras, Portugal
*****   mailto:jcosta at pen.gulbenkian.pt
*****   http://www.pen.gulbenkian.pt/v2/jvc.html