Presence of mitochondrial D-loop DNA in scrapie-infected brain preparations enriched for the prion protein

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The prion preparation has, in recent years, been the focal point of scrapie research. The inability to identify agent-specific nucleic acids in this sample has led to the formulation of the infectious protein or prion hypothesis. In this study, we analyzed three different prion protein-enriched preparations and found all to contain significant amounts of mitochondrial nucleic acid. Southern blot analyses indicated that they are enriched for a specific component of the mitochondrial genome, the single-stranded displacement loop fragment. Our results suggest that if mitochondrial nucleic acids are involved in scrapie infection, it is the displacement loop fragment that is specifically responsible.