Abstract
While prion diseases have been described in numerous species, some, including those of the Canidae family, appear to show resistance or reduced susceptibility. A better understanding of the factors underlying prion susceptibility is crucial for the development of effective treatment and control measures. We recently demonstrated resistance to prion infection in mice overexpressing a mutated prion protein (PrP) carrying a specific amino acid substitution characteristic of canids. Here, we show that coexpression of this mutated PrP and wild-type mouse PrP in transgenic mice inoculated with different mouse-adapted prion strains (22 L, ME7, RML, and 301C) significantly increases survival times (by 45 to 113%). These data indicate that this amino acid substitution confers a dominant-negative effect on PrP, attenuating the conversion of PrPC to PrPSc and delaying disease onset without altering the neuropathological properties of the prion strains. Taken together, these findings have important implications for the development of new treatment approaches for prion diseases based on dominant-negative proteins.




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Acknowledgments
We thank MINECO for the Severo Ochoa Excellence Accreditation (SEV-2016-0644). The authors would like to thank the following for their support: the IKERBasque Foundation, the staff at the CIC bioGUNE animal facility, Dr. Belén Pintado for the Tga20 mouse embryo rederivation, Dr. Glenn Telling for kindly providing the 5C6 antibody, and Patricia Piñeiro, Silvia Ruiz, and Sonia Gómez for their technical assistance. The authors would also like to acknowledge Sara Gutiérrez for the image editing. Alicia Otero was supported by a research grant from the Government of Aragón (C020/2014) cofinanced by the European Social Fund.
Funding
This work was supported financially by grants from the Spanish (AGL2015-65046-C2-1-R, AGL2015-65560-R, and PCIN-2013-065) and Basque (2014111157) governments.
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This study was approved by the Ethics Committee for Animal Experiments of the University of Zaragoza (permit number PI32/13) and was performed in accordance with the recommendations for the care and use of experimental animals and with Spanish national law (R.D. 1201/05).
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Otero, A., Bolea, R., Hedman, C. et al. An Amino Acid Substitution Found in Animals with Low Susceptibility to Prion Diseases Confers a Protective Dominant-Negative Effect in Prion-Infected Transgenic Mice. Mol Neurobiol 55, 6182–6192 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12035-017-0832-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12035-017-0832-8