Ablation of prion protein immunoreactivity by heating in saturated calcium hydroxide

Abstract

Background: Prions, the infectious agents that cause transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), are relatively resistant to destruction by physical, enzymatic, and chemical treatments. Hydrolysis in boiling saturated calcium hydroxide (limewater) utilizes inexpensive chemicals to digest protein components of offal. The purpose of this work was to determine if incubating brain material from scrapie-infected sheep in near-boiling saturated calcium hydroxide solution (Ca(OH) 2 ) would abolish immunoreactivity of the infectious prion (PrP Sc ) as determined by western blot.