Discrimination between scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy in sheep by molecular size, immunoreactivity, and glycoprofile of prion protein.

ABSTRACT: A procedure for discrimination between scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in sheep is of importance for establishing whether BSE has entered the sheep population. Since BSE has not yet been found in sheep at the farm level, such discrimination procedures can be developed only with experimental sheep BSE. Two distinctive molecular features of the prion protein (PrP)-molecular size and glycosylation profile-in proteinase K digests of brain stem tissue from sheep were used here; upon Western blotting, these features led to an unequivocal discrimination among natural scrapie, experimental scrapie, and experimental BSE. The higher electrophoretic mobility of PrP in sheep BSE could be best observed after deglycosylation treatment with N-glycosidase F. A simpler method for confirm

SUBMITTER: Thuring CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC356877 | biostudies-literature | 2004 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature