Sentences with phrase «as yeast prions»

Not exact matches

A team of scientists from Whitehead Institute and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has added markedly to the job description of prions as agents of change, identifying a prion capable of triggering a transition in yeast from its conventional single - celled form to a cooperative, multicellular structure.

«Although we first became aware of prions because they cause several bizarre neurological diseases, the discovery that something so awesomely similar happens in organisms as different as humans and yeast makes us suspect that there is a fundamental, common biochemical process at work here,» said study director Susan Lindquist, PhD, professor of molecular genetics and cell biology and an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Chicago.

The researchers note that in the mammalian brain, whose cells do not divide, prions pass between cells and function as infectious agents; in yeast, they produce heritable changes from one generation to the next.

Although prions are infamous for causing Creutzfeld - Jakob disease, fatal familial insomnia, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow's disease, the present study indicates that prions identified in yeast, and possibly in plants, and other organisms may be beneficial.