HNSC 1200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Carcinogen, Foodborne Illness, Dorsal Root Ganglion

• School: University of Manitoba
• Department: Human Nutritional Sciences
• Course: HNSC 1200
• Professor: Snehil Dua

Document Summary

Course notes: bovine spongiform encephalopathy (bse): mad cow disease. As of 2008, there have been a dozen cases of bse reported. Bse is an example of a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (tse). Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (tses), are diseases that cause brain of the victim to become riddled with holes, taking on sponge-like (swiss cheese) consistency. The cause of tses in animals and humans is a small protein known as a prion (prp). A prion is an infectious protein particle that does not contain dna or rna. The prion can occur in two forms; normal conformer (prpc, causes no problems in the body), and rogue conformer (prpsc, causes problems). The prpsc causes the normal prpc to change shape, causing destruction of cells as the prion travels through the spinal cord to the brain and causes damage (holes) in the brain. Creutzfeldt-jacob disease (cjd) is a tse that causes dementia in humans.