Molecular memory of [PSI⁺] prion strains in S. cerevisiae is dependent on the primary structure of the Sup35 prion domain

Abstract

How prions generate and propagate variation in both mammals and yeast is a topic of great interest and increasing evidence indicates that the tertiary or quaternary structure of prion conformations determines the strain phenotype. Whether or not the conformational information of specific prion ‘strains’ is transmissible to heterologous prion domains at the molecular level and whether this corresponds to a phenotypic change at the ‘strain’ level was investigated using the [PST⁺] prion model of S. cerevisiae.