Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 058101 (2001) [4 pages]Statistical Mechanics of Prion Diseases
We present a two-dimensional, lattice based, protein-level statistical mechanical model for prion diseases (e.g., mad cow disease) with concomitant prion protein misfolding and aggregation. Our studies lead us to the hypothesis that the observed broad incubation time distribution in epidemiological data reflect fluctuation dominated growth seeded by a few nanometer scale aggregates, while much narrower incubation time distributions for innoculated lab animals arise from statistical self-averaging. We model “species barriers” to prion infection and assess a related treatment protocol. © 2001 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.058101
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.058101
PACS:
87.19.Xx, 05.20.Dd, 87.15.He
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