NSCI 1413 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Sickle-Cell Disease, Proteopathy, Protein Folding
12 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
In medicine, proteopathy refers to a class of diseases in which certain proteins become structurally abnormal, and thereby disrupt the function of cells, tissues and organs of the body. Often the proteins fail to fold into their normal configuration; in this misfolded state, the proteins can become toxic in some way (a gain of toxic function) or they can lose their normal function. The protein conformational disorders include alzheimer"s disease, parkinson"s disease, prion disease, type 2 diabetes, and amyloidosis. Amyloid (beta) peptide, tau protein (alpha) -synuclein. Misfolded proteins result when a protein follows the wrong folding pathway or energy- minimizing funnel, and misfolding can happen spontaneously. Most of the time, only the native conformation is produced in the cell. But as millions and millions of copies of each protein are made during our lifetimes, sometimes a random event occurs and one of these molecules follows the wrong path, changing into a toxic configuration.
