Reed Brendon Wickner

Reed Wickner's research focuses on non-chromosomal genes of yeast. He discovered prions (infectious proteins) of yeast, establishing clear evidence that there can be prions and that proteins can be genes. He defined the prion domain of one of these proteins, and obtained evidence that this protein becomes a prion by becoming a self-propagating amyloid (a special filamentous protein form). He showed that the infectious yeast prion amyloids are folded in-register parallel beta sheet structures, and proposed an explanation of how proteins can template their conformation, just like DNA templates its sequence.  His analysis of yeast RNA viruses revealed mechanisms of viral replication and packaging and many cellular determinants of viral expression and propagation, including insights into the translational machinery and post translational protein processing. Current work is dissecting cellular determinants of prion generation and propogation and cellular systems that eliminate yeast prions.

His current work concerns cellular anti-prion systems.