Heparan sulfate (HS) polysaccharides are ubiquitous components of the cell surface and
extracellular matrix of all multicellular animals, whereas heparin is present within mast cells …

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are important complex carbohydrates that participate in many
biological processes through the regulation of their various protein partners. Biochemical …

Background Diverse varieties of often heterogeneous glycans are ubiquitous in nature. They
play critical roles in recognition events, act as energy stores and provide structural stability at …

Prions, the infectious agents of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), have
defied full characterization for decades. The dogma has been that prions lack nucleic acids …

The “protein only” hypothesis postulates that the infectious agent of prion diseases, PrPSc, is
composed of the prion protein (PrP) converted into an amyloid-specific conformation …

In recent studies, the amyloid fibrils produced in vitro from recombinant prion protein
encompassing residues 89− 230 (rPrP 89− 230) were shown to produce transmissible form …

Heparin and the related glycosaminoglycan, heparan sulfate, bind a myriad of proteins. The
structural diversity of heparin and heparan sulfates is enormous, but differences in the …

Prion protein (PrPc) was originally viewed solely as being involved in prion disease, but now
several intriguing lines of evidence have emerged indicating that it plays a fundamental role …

Prion protein (PrP) is usually bound to membranes by a glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)
anchor that associates with detergent-resistant membranes, or rafts. To examine the effect of …

The crucial event in the development of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs)
is the conformational change of a host-encoded membrane protein-the cellular PrPC-into a …