Special proteins known as prions, which are perhaps best known as the agents of mad cow and other neurodegenerative diseases, can also serve as an important source of beneficial variation in nature, confirms a new study in the April 3rd issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication.

Scientists in Wisconsin are reporting in a paper scheduled for the July 1 issue of ACS' Environmental Science & Technology that typical wastewater treatment processes do not degrade prions.

Magnetic resonance studies find clear differences between the structures of infectious and non-infectious prions

Prions, the infamous agents behind mad cow disease and its human variation, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, also have a helpful side. According to new findings from Gerald Zamponi and colleagues, normally functioning prions prevent neurons from working themselves to death. The findings appear in the May 5th issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.

One of the new in vitro tests, called the Standard Scrapie Cell Assay, measures prion infectivity levels in a highly accurate and extremely rapid way, producing results in less than two weeks. The second test, called the Cell Panel Assay, allows researchers to quickly distinguish between several prion strains in various cells lines.

Prions -infectious, oddly-folded proteins that are the main suspects in fatal neurodegenerative diseases such as Cruetzfeldt-Jakob and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or "mad cow" -- remain mostly a mystery to scientists. Very few prions have been fully described. How they infect and propagate is not fully understood.

The rogue proteins that cause chronic wasting disease (CWD) exhibit a dramatic increase in their infectious nature when bound to common soil particles, according to a new study.

Scientists have made significant advances towards the development of a technique that could be used to confirm whether someone is infected with variant CJD.

Researchers have shown that a recently developed laboratory method to amplify prions (Protein Misfolding Cyclic Amplification) can be applied to variant CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease). The work was carried out by scientists at the National CJD Surveillance Unit at the University of Edinburgh, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, Neuropathogenesis Unit and CSL Behring. It is published this month in the Journal of Pathology.