On the kinetics of infection by pathogenic prion protein molecules

Literature data on the transmission of spongiform encephalopathies between mammal species point to the importance of methionine residuies in species barriers. This in turn favours the assumption of an oligomerization of identical metastable pathogenic prion protein molecules as the rate-determining step in those diseases. Published experimental data on the analogous case of yeast prion proteins closely agree with the proposed scheme.