Converse of object

• call: The most common position among scientists is that the infective agent with BSE and CJD is a specific form of protein called a prion.

Adjective modifier

• abnormal: He highlighted how this research has now demonstrated that the applications of Seprion can be expanded to the detection of abnormal prion in blood.

• normal: By contrast PrPc, the normal prion, is ubiquitous; a cell membrane glycoprotein found on and in all cells studied.

Modifies a noun

• protein: Often used to identify the prion protein in brain tissue.

• disease: Some people referred to these teams will turn out not to have prion disease.

• gene: A genetic disease in humans caused by an inherited mutation of the prion protein gene.

• hypothesis: The prion hypothesis states that it is due to differences in the chemical or tertiary structure of the prion protein.

• mutation: The cause of this novel agent is likely to have been a new prion mutation in cattle, or possibly sheep.

• strain: This would be consistent with their being exposed to the same prion strain.

Noun used with modifier

• scrapie: For example scientists so far have failed to find a scrapie prion nucleic acid.

• sheep: The NIMR researchers set out to explore this using a fragment of the sheep prion thought to be important for aggregation.

• host: Currently work in this group is focussed in two areas: Immunobiology of the normal host prion protein, PrPc.