Question about CJD

[Brodo]

I would just like to confirm my understanding of CJD (creutzfeldt Jakob Disease)

My notes say that the PrPc protein is converted by some unknown protein x into PrP*
Would this protein x be the prion?

Also, the effect of this conversion is that the PrP* will use a PrPsc protein as a template to convert PrP* into another PrPsc. Where did this initial PrPsc protein come from?

Thank you

[Darby]

The assumption is that the protein is maybe from a mutated code, with a change that a) makes it fold up differently, and b) produces a form that can reconform the "regular" version into something like it.

[Brodo]

Okay, thanks.
But is protein x a prion?

[canalon]

generally yes.