LETTERS TO THE EDITORS
More Misfoldings
To the Editors:
I read the article "A New Understanding of Protein Mutation
Unfolds" by P. Michael Conn and Jo Ann Janovick (July-August)
with great interest, but I was disappointed to find prions, slow
viral infections and mad cow disease omitted. These poorly
understood illnesses may well be the result of misfolded proteins.
David J. Melvin
Chester, New Jersey
Dr. Conn responds:
We share Dr. Melvin's view that prion diseases may result from
problems in folding; this possibility was mentioned in Figure 10 and
in the section of the text titled "Misfolding as a Disease
Etiology." The third reference cited in the article, by
Castro-Fernandez et al., has more detail on prion disease
and other disorders for which the current evidence of protein
misfolding is as yet less compelling than for those examples we
cited in the article.