Prions are unconventional infectious agents thought to be primarily composed of PrPSc, a multimeric misfolded conformer of the ubiquitously expressed host-encoded prion protein (PrPC). They cause fatal neurodegenerative diseases in both animals and humans. The disease phenotype is not uniform within species, and stable, self-propagating variations in PrPSc conformation could encode this ‘strain’ diversity. However, much remains to be learned about the physical relationship between the infectious agent and PrPSc aggregation state, and how this varies according to the strain. We applied a sedimentation velocity technique to a panel of natural, biologically cloned strains obtained by propagation of classical and atypical sheep scrapie and BSE infectious sources in transgenic mice expressing ovine PrP. Detergent-solubilized, infected brain homogenates were used as starting material. Solubilization conditions were optimized to separate PrPSc aggregates from PrPC. The distribution of PrPSc and infectivity in the gradient was determined by immunoblotting and mouse bioassay, respectively. As a general feature, a major proteinase K-resistant PrPSc peak was observed in the middle part of the gradient. This population approximately corresponds to multimers of 12–30 PrP molecules, if constituted of PrP only. For two strains, infectivity peaked in a markedly different region of the gradient. This most infectious component sedimented very slowly, suggesting small size oligomers and/or low density PrPSc aggregates. Extending this study to hamster prions passaged in hamster PrP transgenic mice revealed that the highly infectious, slowly sedimenting particles could be a feature of strains able to induce a rapidly lethal disease. Our findings suggest that prion infectious particles are subjected to marked strain-dependent variations, which in turn could influence the strain biological phenotype, in particular the replication dynamics.

Implementation in Europe of large-scale testing to detect bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)-infected cattle and prevent the transmission of this prion disease to humans has recently led to the discovery of novel types of bovine prions. We characterized atypical isolates called BSE L-type by analyzing their molecular and neuropathological properties during transmission to several mouse lines transgenic for the prion protein (PrP). Unexpectedly, such isolates acquired strain features closely similar to those of BSE-type agents when propagated in mice expressing ovine PrP, although they retained phenotypic traits distinct from BSE in other lines, including bovine PrP mice. These findings further underline the relationship between the crossing of species barrier and prion strain diversification, and, although the origin of the epidemic BSE agent has only been speculative until now, they provide new insight into the nature of the events that could have led to the appearance of this agent.

A new variant of Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease (vCJD) was identified in humans and linked to the consumption of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)-infected meat products. Recycling of ruminant tissue in meat and bone meal (MBM) has been proposed as origin of the BSE epidemic. During this epidemic, sheep and goats have been exposed to BSE-contaminated MBM. It is well known that sheep can be experimentally infected with BSE and two field BSE-like cases have been reported in goats. In this work we evaluated the human susceptibility to small ruminants-passaged BSE prions by inoculating two different transgenic mouse lines expressing the methionine (Met) allele of human PrP at codon 129 (tg650 and tg340) with several sheep and goat BSE isolates and compared their transmission characteristics with those of cattle BSE. While the molecular and neuropathological transmission features were undistinguishable and similar to those obtained after transmission of vCJD in both transgenic mouse lines, sheep and goat BSE isolates showed higher transmission efficiency on serial passaging compared to cattle BSE. We found that this higher transmission efficiency was strongly influenced by the ovine PrP sequence, rather than by other host species-specific factors. Although extrapolation of results from prion transmission studies by using transgenic mice has to be done very carefully, especially when human susceptibility to prions is analyzed, our results clearly indicate that Met129 homozygous individuals might be susceptible to a sheep or goat BSE agent at a higher degree than to cattle BSE, and that these agents might transmit with molecular and neuropathological properties indistinguishable from those of vCJD. Our results suggest that the possibility of a small ruminant BSE prion as vCJD causal agent could not be ruled out, and that the risk for humans of a potential goat and/or sheep BSE agent should not be underestimated.

Although Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is the cause of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans, the zoonotic potential of scrapie prions remains unknown. Mice genetically engineered to overexpress the human prion protein (tgHu) have emerged as highly relevant models for gauging the capacity of prions to transmit to humans. These models can propagate human prions without any apparent transmission barrier and have been used used to confirm the zoonotic ability of BSE. Here we show that a panel of sheep scrapie prions transmit to several tgHu mice models with an efficiency comparable to that of cattle BSE. The serial transmission of different scrapie isolates in these mice led to the propagation of prions that are phenotypically identical to those causing sporadic CJD (sCJD) in humans. These results demonstrate that scrapie prions have a zoonotic potential and raise new questions about the possible link between animal and human prions.

Prions are infectious pathogens essentially composed of PrP(Sc), an abnormally folded form of the host-encoded prion protein PrP(C). Constrained steric interactions between PrP(Sc) and PrP(C) are thought to provide prions with species specificity and to control cross-species transmission into other host populations, including humans. We compared the ability of brain and lymphoid tissues from ovine and human PrP transgenic mice to replicate foreign, inefficiently transmitted prions. Lymphoid tissue was consistently more permissive than the brain to prions such as those causing chronic wasting disease and bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Furthermore, when the transmission barrier was overcome through strain shifting in the brain, a distinct agent propagated in the spleen, which retained the ability to infect the original host. Thus, prion cross-species transmission efficacy can exhibit a marked tissue dependence.