A novel cellular prion protein isoform present in rapid anterograde axonal transport

We studied the axonal transport of PrP in hamster retinal and sciatic nerve axons. Our results show that a novel 38 kDa form is the predominant form in rapid anterograde axonal transport while the 36 kDa and 33 kDa PrP forms, abundant in nerve and brain, appear to be either stationary or slowly transported. We did not detect any significant retrograde transport of PrP. These results show that 38 kDa PrP is the form exported from the cell body to the axonal compartment where it may represent the precursor to the more abundant PrP forms after its modification in nerve fibres or terminals.