Overview of the Special Issue "Protein-Based Infection, Inheritance, and Memory".

The amyloid properties of RAD51 imply that aberrant protein-based assemblies could potentially affect DNA lesions, thus providing a possible link between protein-based and DNA-based transmission machineries. The authors highlight the biological functions of amyloids formed by proteins containing -barrel domains and discuss probable pathways of amyloid formation by such proteins. The review critically assesses existing diagnostic techniques and explains how the principles and procedures derived from studying transmissible amyloids could be applied to clinical and pre-clinical detection of amyloids involved in other diseases, such as renal amyloids. While some of cases of amyloid-associated diseases are heritable (that is, derived from DNA mutations), the majority of cases are sporadic, and prion-like transmissibility of protein assemblies has been observed at a cellular level and, in some experimental models, even at the organismal level [[14], [16]]. [Extracted from the article]