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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Ames, Iowa » National Animal Disease Center » Virus and Prion Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #426707
Research Project: Elucidating the Pathobiology and Transmission of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies

Location: Virus and Prion Research

Title: Emergence of transmissible minor prion strains following heat exposure

Author
item STEADMAN, BENJAMIN - Creighton University
item Bian, Jifeng
item SHIKIYA, RONALD - Creighton University
item BARTZ, JASON - Creighton University

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/29/2025
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Prions cause infectious neurodegenerative diseases that can cross species barriers. For example, multiple strains of chronic wasting disease (CWD) are emerging with uncharacterized host ranges. The effect of heat upon CWD transmission remains larger unknown, but a recent study suggests that CWD prions can be detected from raw and cooked meats. We previously found that minor strains emerged following biochemical reduction of PrPSc from biologically cloned hamster drowsy (DY) transmissible mink encephalopathy (TME). It is known that heat can inactivate prions in a strain specific manner. Our objective was to identify heat conditions that enable minor strains to emerge and to characterize these strains. To test this, we treated DY TME at temperatures ranging from 85-105°C for 24 hours to probe for minor strains. We found that heat exposure of DY TME resulted in emerging thermostable minor strains. While PK digested DY TME PrPSc migrated to 19 kDa, all minor strains migrated to 21 kDa. Inoculating these minor strains into hamsters resulted in shorter incubation periods and different clinical signs compared to DY TME. Minor strains also had higher RK13 cell infection efficiencies and greater intraspecies PMCA conversion efficiencies compared to DY TME. Importantly, when seeded interspecies into mouse substrate, DY TME did not produce PrPSc following serial PMCA rounds. However, all minor strains robustly converted mouse PrPC to PrPSc after one PMCA round. Overall, these observations suggest that minor prion strains can emerge following heat treatment which differ from the parental strain and can contribute to overcoming transmission barriers.