Current Issues in Molecular Biology, Volume 36, Issue 1

Traditional taxonomy in biology assumes that life is organized in a simple tree. Attempts to classify microorganisms in this way in the genomics era led microbiologists to look for finite sets of 'core' genes that uniquely group taxa as clades in the...

The microbial community inhabiting our intestine, known as 'microbiota', and the ensemble of their genomes (microbiome) regulate important functions of the host, being essential for health maintenance. The recent development of next-generation sequen...

Prion diseases or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are fatal neurological diseases that include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, scrapie in sheep and goats, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, camel spongiform...

Lowering cellular prion protein (PrP^C) levels in the brain is predicted to be a powerful therapeutic strategy for the prion disease. PrP^C may act as an antiapoptotic agent by blocking some of the internal environmental factors that initiate apoptosis...

Incidences of iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (iCJD) are caused by transplantation of prion-contaminated hormones, cornea and dura mater as well as contact with prion- contaminated medical devices, such as stereotactic electrodes, used in neuros...

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease of cervids characterized by clini- cal symptoms of progressive weight loss, abnormal behaviour and excessive salivation. Incidents have been reported in North America and Korea as well as in Europe. Cu...

Prion diseases are a group of transmissible fatal neurodegenerative disorders. Neuropatho- logical features of prion diseases include neuroinflammation featuring the infiltration of activated microglia in affected brain areas as well as the accumulat...