Abnormal prions are infectious agents involved in a neuro-degenerative disease, which occurs naturally such as Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in deer and elk, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, Scrapie in sheep and goats and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) in humans. The cellular prion protein of the elk consists of 233 amino acids (residues 25-257), which represents an autonomous folding unit with three α-helices and two-stranded anti-parallel β-sheets. Here, we demonstrated elk-recPrP (Elk recombinant prion protein) which can be obtained as follows; (1) Cloning of elk PrP gene, (2) Expression of a histidine-tagged full-length elk PrP by induction with IPTG in E. coli and (3) Purification by affinity chromatography using Ni-NTA agarose resin. In Western blot and ELISA analysis, elk-recPrP showed specific activity against anti-PrP monoclonal antibody. Thus, our elk-recPrP would be a useful tool for the understanding of basic structure and mechanism studies of PrPSC formation.

ABSTRACT
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
  1. Construction of plasmid pRSETB-elk PrP
  2. Expression and purification of elk-recPrP using anE-coli expression system
  3. SDS-PAGE and Western blot analysis
  4. ELISA reactivity anti-PrP monoclonal antibodies withelk recombinant PrP
 Results
 Discussion
 References

• 김효진(국립수의과학검역원) | Hyo-Jin Kim (National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service)
• 이윤희(국립수의과학검역원) | Yoon-Hee Lee (National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service)
• 정혜영(국립수의과학검역원) | Hye-Young Jeoung (National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service)
• 김민정(국립수의과학검역원) | Min-Jeong Kim (National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service)
• 탁동섭(국립수의과학검역원) | Dong-Seob Tark (National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service)
• 조인수(국립수의과학검역원) | In-Soo Cho (National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service)
• 손현주(국립수의과학검역원) | Hyun-Joo Sohn (National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service) Correspondence