Beyond discovering the new prion’s relevance to the persistence of memory or even to the functioning of the brain, Kausik and I had found two new biological features of prions. First, a normal physiological signal—serotonin—is critical for converting CPEB from one form to another. Second, CPEB is the first self-propagating form of a prion known to serve a physiological function—in this case, perpetuation of synaptic facilitation and memory storage. In all other cases previously studied, the self-propagating form either causes disease and death by killing nerve cells or, more rarely, is
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