First experimental transmission of fatal familial insomnia

Article Abstract:

Research classifies fatal familial insomnia (FFI) in the category of infectious cerebral amyloidoses and related to spongiform encephalopathies. The experiment transmitted FFI, a rare inherited neurological disease characterized by intractable insomnia and other autonomic abnormalities, in mice using a piece of thalamus from a FFI patient whose relatives were unaware of a history of the disease but later found ancestral affiliations to a previously reported American FFI family. This experimental transmission and the distinct encephalopathy characteristics confirm the classification which had previously been questioned because of transmission problems.

Genetic aspects, Neurology, Insomnia

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B Lymphocytes and neuroinvasion

Article Abstract:

Further studies of scrapie pathogenesis have been undertaken with a molecular dissection of genetically altered mice, and a team has taken advantage of the fact that the gene encoding the prion protein PrP can be made inoperative without obvious harm to mice. An observation by Klein and colleagues found that mature B lymphocytes take part in neuroinvasion, which should result in an increasingly precise appreciation of the molecular basis of scrapie pathogenesis.

Scrapie

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Muscle force is generated by myosin heads stereospecifically attached to actin

Article Abstract:

Scientists investigating the interaction of myosin crossbridges with actin have found that muscle force is involved in the transition process. Nonspecifically attached myosin crossbridges change quickly into stereospecifically bound mysoin crossbridges in the presence of muscle force. X-ray diffraction pattern analysis was used in temperature experiments to determine tension difference measurements.

Muscles, Muscle tone

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