Browsing by Subject "RT-QuIC"

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    Detection of Chronic Wasting Disease Prions in Soil at an Illegal White-tailed Deer Carcass Disposal Site: An Intersection of the Ecology of Environmental Matrices and Prion Detection Techniques
    (2024-08) Grunklee, Madeline
    Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a transmissible neurodegenerative prion disorder affecting cervids such as deer, elk, and moose, causing rapid and severe neurological degeneration followed by eventual death. Once CWD prions have accumulated in the body, they can be shed from infected animals through excreta and secreta such as saliva, blood, urine, and feces. Prions shed into the environment can persist in environmental matrices for a currently undefined amount of time, posing significant environmental contamination concerns. Prion contaminated soils could serve as a reservoir for persistent prion transmission in cervids, and pose unknown risks to wildlife, humans, and ecosystems as a whole. We validated the use of RT-QuIC in vitro prion amplification assay to detect prions in soil at an illegal white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus, WTD) carcass disposal site in Beltrami County, Minnesota. To do this, we prioritized soil sampling around 11 locations from which we had previously detected CWD in biological material from WTD remains using RT-QuIC. Given the history of PrPCWD-positive carcass material decomposition at this site, we aimed to characterize the extent of environmental contamination around these focal points. We detected CWD in 28 soil samples across 17 locations out of 207 soil samples tested. Of these detections, 17 soil samples were located at sites which also demonstrated prion seeding activity in biological samples from WTD remains. These detections suggest that this carcass disposal practice can have widespread and long-term implications for the contamination of environmental matrices including the potential to cause prion contamination hot spots in the environment.
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    Supporting Dataset for "RT-QuIC Optimization for Prion Detection in Two Minnesota Soil Types" and "Detection of Chronic Wasting Disease Prions in Soil at an Illegal White-tailed Deer Carcass Disposal Site"
    (2025-02-24) Grunklee, Madeline K; Bartz, Jason C; Karwan, Diana L; Lichtenberg, Stuart S; Lurndahl, Nicole A; Larsen, Peter A; Schwabenlander, Marc D; Rowden, Gage R; Li, E Anu; Yuan, Qi; Wolf, Tiffany M; wolfx305@umn.edu; Wolf, Tiffany M; Minnesota Center for Prion Research and Outreach (MNPRO)
    These data describe prion detections in soil using real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) assay with various metric calculations common to RT-QuIC. The Soil_Cntrl_Expmts_Data.xlsx file contains data from a series of control experiments aimed at optimizing and applying RT-QuIC for the detection of chronic wasting disease prions in environmental soil samples. We focused negative control experiments on refining RT-QuIC and sample processing to use on Minnesota native soils, which included limiting background noise from the samples. Starting on 2023-05-08, we used spiked soil control experiments to distinguish true prion signal from background noise and validate detection reliability. Following soil control experiments, the Soil_Test_Samples_Data.xlsx file describes our sample testing in RT-QuIC collected from our study site, an illegal white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus, WTD) carcass disposal site and a nearby captive WTD farm in Beltrami County, Minnesota. We analyzed study site soil samples for prion presence to assess potential environmental contamination associated with improper carcass disposal practices.