Fig. 1
From: Two alternative pathways for generating transmissible prion disease de novo
Schematic illustration of two alternative pathways for generating PrPSc. The first pathway was established in previous studies [11, 12], it involves direct inoculation of in vitro-generated rPrP fibrils into animals and consists of two main steps. In a first step, rPrP fibrils seeded atypical PrPres, a transmissible form of PrP that replicates silently without causing clinical disease. In a second step, atypical PrPres produces PrPSc in rare and stochastic seeding events that are described by a deformed templating mechanism [16]. PrPSc replicates faster than atypical PrPres and eventually replaces it during serial passages. An alternative pathway is under investigation by the current work. In vitro-generated rPrP fibrils were used to seed serial dgPMCAb that produced fibril-induced atypical PrPres, which was inoculated into animals