For the first time, researchers have captured images of prions — proteins that can misfold and spread, causing neurodegeneration — in living cells. The images show the proteins residing on the cell surface in strings and webs.

Albert Taraboulos at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his colleagues used antibodies that react with a subset of the misfolded proteins to visualize the prions in cultured mouse cells and brain tissue under a fluorescence microscope. The team found prion strings up to five micrometres long that remained stable on the cell surface for several hours.

This anchoring provides insight into how misfolded prions interact with cells and can resist degradation, the authors say.

J. Cell Biol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201308028 (2014)