Résumé
It is commonly assumed that the physiological isoform of prion protein, PrP
C, is cleaved during its normal processing between residues 111/112, whereas the pathogenic isoform, PrP
Sc, is cleaved at an alternate site in the octapeptide repeat region around position 90. Here we demonstrated both in cultured cells and
in vivo, that PrP
C is subject to a complex set of post-translational processing with the molecule being cleaved upstream of position 111/112, in the octapeptide repeat region or at position 96. PrP has therefore two main cleavage sites that we decided to name α and β. Cleavage of PrP
C at these sites leads us to re-evaluate the function of both N- and C-terminus fragments thus generated.