Prion disease strains

It is (very) difficult to see how a particular strain of disease can be transmitted to a host, who will then specifically transmit that strain to other animals. However the same mice can transmit different strains of scrapie. This is only consistent with the prion hypothesis if different PrPsc molecules can impose different conformational changes on the same host PrPc.

Sheep PrPsc PrPc PrPsc