| Prions, or proteinaceous infections, are caused by proteins that have the unique ability to adopt an alternative, self-replicating structure. These self-replicating structures are the causative agent of a number of mammalian diseases including Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and Kuru. More recently, yeast were discovered to carry at least a dozen proteins capable of making this structural conversion. Yeast prions are unique in that their prion-forming domains are intrinsically disordered domains, with unusual compositional biases. This thesis addresses two broad questions about yeast prion physiology. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.). |
