Cellular prion protein and NMDA receptor modulation: protecting against excitotoxicity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Although it is well established that misfolding of the cellular prion protein (PrP(C)) into the β-sheet-rich, aggregated scrapie conformation (PrP(Sc)) causes a variety of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), the physiological roles of PrP(C) are still incompletely understood. There is accumulating evidence describing the roles of PrP(C) in neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation. Recently, we identified a functional regulation of NMDA receptors by PrP(C) that involves formation of a physical protein complex between these proteins. Excessive NMDA receptor activity during conditions such as ischemia mediates enhanced Ca(2+) entry into cells and contributes to excitotoxic neuronal death. In addition, NMDA receptors and/or PrP(C) play critical roles in neuroinflammation and glial cell toxicity. Inhibition of NMDA receptor activity protects against PrP(Sc)-induced neuronal death. Moreover, in mice lacking PrP(C), infarct size is increased after focal cerebral ischemia, and absence of PrP(C) increases susceptibility of neurons to NMDA receptor-dependent death. Recently, PrP(C) was found to be a receptor for oligomeric beta-amyloid (Aβ) peptides, suggesting a role for PrP(C) in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Our recent findings suggest that Aβ peptides enhance NMDA receptor current by perturbing the normal copper- and PrP(C)-dependent regulation of these receptors. Here, we review evidence highlighting a role for PrP(C) in preventing NMDA receptor-mediated excitotoxicity and inflammation. There is a need for more detailed molecular characterization of PrP(C)-mediated regulation of NMDA receptors, such as determining which NMDA receptor subunits mediate pathogenic effects upon loss of PrP(C)-mediated regulation and identifying PrP(C) binding site(s) on the receptor. This knowledge will allow development of novel therapeutic interventions for not only TSEs, but also for AD and other neurodegenerative disorders involving dysfunction of PrP(C).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".