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This is an oral history with Dr. Bruce Wilcox Chesebro on October 24, 2022, about his career at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The interview is being done over Zoom. The interviewer is Dr. Victoria A. Harden, Founding Director, Emerita, Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, National Institutes of Health.
Harden: Dr. Chesebro, would you please state your full name, that you know that this interview is being recorded and that you give permission for the recording?
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Another interesting question was to determine the normal role of PrP in animals which were not infected with prions. This question was approached using several lines of mice depleted for expression of PrP. The most important line was the knockout made in the 129/Ola mouse strain by [Dr.] Jean Manson and coworkers in Edinburgh, Scotland. These mice did not have changes in the chromosome in the sequences flanking the PrP KO locus, so the changes observed could be attributed to the deleted PrP gene without complication known to occur in the other PrP knockout lines used by other groups.
Dr. Bruce Chesebro and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Rachel LaCasse, undated photo.
Except for their total resistance to prion infection, there were surprising few defects in PrP null mice. The main defect we uncovered in PrP null mice was a defect in spatial visual memory. This is similar to the ability to remember where the exit door is located after one has entered a large room or theater. In the case of mice, they are trained to locate a food delivery lever based on the visible landmarks in a room rather than a colored light over the lever in their cage. This work was done in collaboration with [Dr.] Jose R. Criado and Michael Oldstone at the Scripps Research Institute in LaJolla, CA.
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