Acknowledgements We thank Mr Baoyun Zhang and Tongxin Zhao for their excellent technical supports. We are indebted to Dr Jian-Mei Gao for her helpful discussion. This work is supported by the National Science and Technology Task Force Project (2006BAD06A13-2), National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (2007CB310505), and Chinese National Natural Science Foundation Grants 30771914, 30571672 and 30500018.
Doppel (Dpl) is a prion (PrP)-like protein due to the structural and biochemical similarities; however, the natural functions of Dpl and PrP remain unclear. In this study, a 531-bp human PRND gene sequence encodin...