CRC Press Prion Biology: Research and Advances

This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. This book contains a selection of chapters aimed to provide a better understanding prion structure and biology. Together these chapters provide an overview of prion biology and underscore some of the challenges we face if we want to understand how this lively pathogen propagates and evolves in mammals. There is also mounting evidence that studying prion biology has a wider relevance due to similarities in the processes of protein misfolding and aggregation between prion disorders and other neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s diseases. About the Author Dr. Vincent Béringue is working in the prion field for almost twenty years. He has obtained his PhD in 1998 from the AgroParisTech Institute in Paris, in the laboratory of late Dr. Dominique Dormont. After a MRC-funded postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Prof. John Collinge and Dr. Simon Hawke at Imperial College School of Medicine in London, he joined Dr. Hubert Laude’s laboratory at INRA (National Institute for Agricultural Research) in Jouy-en-Josas in 2001, as permanent staff scientist. He is now head of lab in the Molecular Virology Immunology Department at INRA. His primary research interests include the biochemistry, diversity and evolution of animal and human prions.