PRNP and neurodegenerative disease: Prion diseases like scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle or Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in humans are fatal neurodegenerative diseases characterized by the conformational conversion of the normal, mainly α-helical cellular prion protein (PrPC) into the abnormal β-sheet rich infectious isoform PrPSc.