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From the European Society for Clinical Virology 2022 Conference in Manchester UK, Vincent speaks with Richard Knight about prion diseases and the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalitis that led to cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
Host: Vincent Racaniello
Guest: Richard Knight
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Download TWiV 950 (68 MB .mp3, 114 min)
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Show notes at microbe.tv/twiv
TWiV revisits chronic wasting disease of cervids and the ability of the prions to infect meadow voles and raccoons, and the suggestion that stochastic assembly of influenza virus particles may play a role in phenotypic diversity.
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Rich Condit, and Amy Rosenfeld
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Download TWiV 878 (75 MB .mp3, 124 min)
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Show notes at microbe.tv/twiv
Prions are not viruses – they are infectious proteins that lack nucleic acids. Nevertheless, virologists have always been fascinated by prions - they appear in virology textbooks (where else would you put them?) and are taught in virology classes. I’ve written about prions on this blog (five articles, to be exact – look under P in the Table of Contents) and I’m fascinated by their biology and transmission. That’s why the newly solved structure of an infectious prion protein is the topic of the sixth prion article at virology blog.
Spongiform encephalopathies are neurodegenerative diseases caused by misfolding of normal cellular prion proteins. Human spongiform encephalopathies are placed into three groups: infectious, familial or genetic, and sporadic, distinguished by how the disease is acquired initially. In all cases, the pathogenic protein is the host-encoded PrPC protein with an altered conformation, called PrPsc. In the simplest case, PrPSc converts normal PrPC protein into more copies of the pathogenic form (illustrated).
The structure of the normal PrPC protein, solved some time ago, revealed that it is largely alpha-helical with little beta-strand content. The structure of PrPSc protein has been elusive, because it forms aggregates and amyloid fibrils. It has been suggested that the PrPSc protein has more beta-strand content than the normal protein, but how this property would lead to prion replication was unknown. Clearly solving the structure of prion protein was needed to fully understand the biology of this unusual pathogen.
The structure of PrPSc protein has now been solved by cryo-electron microscopy and image reconstruction (link to paper). The protein was purified from transgenic mice programmed to produce a form of  PrPSc protein that is not anchored to the cell membrane, and which is also underglycosylated. The protein causes disease in mice but is more homogeneous and forms fibrillar plaques, allowing gentler purification methods.
The structure of this form of the PrPSc protein reveals that it consists of two intertwined fibrils (red in the image) which most likely consist of a series of repeated beta-strands, or rungs, called a beta-solenoid. The structure provides clues about how a pathogenic prion protein converts a normal PrPC into PrPSc . The upper and lower rungs of beta-solenoids are likely the initiation points for hydrogen-bonding with new PrPC molecules – in many proteins with beta-solenoids, they are blocked to prevent propagation of beta-sheets. Once added to the fibrils, the ends would serve to recruit additional proteins, and the chain lengthens.
The authors note that the molecular interactions that control prion templating, including hydrogen-bonding, charge and hydrophobic interactions, aromatic stacking, and steric constraints, also play roles in DNA replication.
The structure of PrPSc protein provides a mechanism for prion replication by incorporation of additional molecules into a growing beta-solenoid. I wonder if incorporation into fibrils is the sole driving force for converting PrPCprotein into PrPSc, or if PrPC is conformationally altered before it ever encounters a growing fibril.
Here is a follow-up to last week’s article that described a case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in a Texas resident caused by ingestion of BSE-contaminated beef 14 years ago.
A 59 year old male patient was admitted to the trauma unit in Lancaster, PA with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. There was substantial bleeding and brain tissue extrusion from the bullet exit wound. While the patient was intubated, examination of his electronic health records revealed a previous diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD). After discussion with his family, the breathing tube was removed and the patient expired.
After discovering that the patient had CJD, TSE (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) decontamination protocols were initiated. Equipment and surfaces that had been exposed to highly infectious brain tissues were identified. Because prions are extremely difficult to destroy, it was decided to incinerate many pieces of equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars. This decision was taken to protect workers in the trauma unit and future hospital patients from hospital-acquired CJD.
The usual sterilization conditions (121 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes under high pressure) do not destroy prion protein infectivity. Consequently the World Health Organization recommends incineration of potentially contaminated materials. While environmental transmission of prion diseases has not been reported, WHO suggests rinsing surfaces with sodium hydroxide or sodium hypochlorite for 1 hour, followed by flooding with water, to remove prions.
This case illustrates the problems associated with an unusual infectious agent, the prion, that is difficult to inactivate. It also shows the value of electronic health records. Without such readily accessible information, the discovery that the patient had CJD would have been substantially delayed, leading to further contamination.
Creutzfeldt-Jacob associated deaths have increased slowly but steadily in the US since 1979. The number of cases will likely continue to increase until early diagnosis tests become routinely available, and drugs are developed that can cure the disease.
Spongiform encephalopathies are neurodegenerative diseases caused by misfolding of normal cellular prion proteins. A 2014 case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob prion disease in the United States was probably caused by eating beef from animals with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.
Human spongiform encephalopathies are placed into three groups: infectious, familial or genetic, and sporadic, distinguished by how the disease is acquired initially. In the mid 1980s, a prion disease called bovine spongiform encephalopathy appeared in cows in the United Kingdom. It is believed to have been transmitted to cows by feeding them meat and bone meal, a high protein supplement prepared from the offal of sheep, cattle, pigs, and chicken. Some of the animals prepared for feed likely had a prion disease. Cases of variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, a new spongiform encephalopathy of humans, began to appear in 1994 in Great Britain. They were characterized by a lower mean age of the patients (26 years), longer duration of illness, and differences in other clinical and pathological characteristics. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is caused by prions transmitted by the consumption of cattle with bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
In late 2012 a male Texas resident began showing symptoms of depression and anxiety, followed by delusions, hallucinations, and other changes in behavior. Over the next 18 months the patient’s condition deteriorated, leading to inability to ambulate or speak, and after several episodes of aspiration pneumonia and sepsis the patient died. During the illness prion disease was suspected, but tests for this condition were negative. After death, examination of brain biopsies revealed typical prion plaques, and misfolded prion proteins were found in urine, confirming the diagnosis of variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease.
The source of the patient’s prion disease was likely consumption of contaminated beef from cows with bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The patient probably acquired the infection in Russia, Lebanon, or Kuwait, three countries that had received BSE-contaminated beef from the UK, and and where he had previously lived. He resided in the US for 14 years before developing symptoms, an incubation period consistent with models of the vCJD epidemic.
This Texas patient is the fourth worldwide since 2012 to be diagnosed with vCJD; the others were from the UK and France. There are likely to be additional cases of vCJD in the future: surveys of archived appendix tissues in the UK show that 1 in 2,000 persons born during 1941-1985 have asymptomatic vCJD infection. These individuals could transmit the misfolded prion proteins to others via transplantation, blood transfusion, or surgical instruments (prion infectivity is not destroyed by autoclaving).
The good news is that vCJD is rare: there have been 230 reported cases of vCJD worldwide caused by consumption of BSE beef. The bad news is that vCJD will probably continue to appear in humans for many years, not only from the aftermath of the BSE epidemic. Rare cows spontaneously develop BSE, and because cattle are slaughtered before disease symptoms are evident, contaminated meat could enter the food supply.
On episode #343 of the science show This Week in Virology, the TWiVerinoes discuss the potential for prion spread by plants, global circulation patterns of influenza virus, and the roles of Argonautes and a viral protein in RNA silencing in plants.
You can find TWiV #343 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.