Fungal Prions

Fungal prions provide an excellent model for the understanding of disease-forming mammalian prions. Fungal prions are naturally occurring proteins that can undergo a structural conversion that becomes self-propagating and infectious. They represent an epigenetic phenomenon in which information is not encoded in the nuclear DNA, but is structurally encoded within the protein. Several prion-forming proteins have been identified in fungi, primarily in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Some of these are not associated with any disease state and may possibly have a beneficial role by giving an evolutionary advantage to their host.