Prion Through Physical Art

I thoroughly enjoyed the art lectures given in the past week, particularly in regards to the use of specific chemical liquids to create colors on a biodegradable sheet of paper essentially made from food. The colors reflected beautiful, soft pastels using lemon juice, water, bleach, and vinegar. Although soft, romantic colors may not immediately jump to mind when reflecting on the destructive and chaotic nature of prions, I decided to use colors in order to better outline the differences of the prion biological structure.

This week, I used three primary pastel colors to draw the different normal prion protein and the abnormal prion protein. The normal prion protein (which is indicated on the left side of the paper) maintains many alpha-helix regions while also being fairly soluble. The abnormal prion protein contains many beta-pleated sheet regions and is also insoluble. Biologically, we understand that transmitted brain tissue leads to Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies even after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In addition to the determination that the causing agent was not viural, the amino acid sequence of proteins in healthy brain tissue reflected similarities to the proteins in the brain tissue from TSE. Thus, both primary structures are the same, but the tertiary structures are vastly different and thus reflect varying impacts on the protein’s function. The abnormal proteins allows for conformational change in the normal protein so that it may also be abnormal. As seen in the art depiction, the abnormal folded proteins retains segments in the form of beta sheets, which stick together, thus leading to the clumping of proteins that resist breaking down. As these clumps of proteins evolve, nerve cells are destroyed which lead to further neurological symptoms.