Fig 4.

Direct surface measurement of prion seeding activity on stainless steel wire mirrors the results of surface-recovered prion seeding activity. (A)Overview of wire contamination and analysis by RT-QuIC (created with BioRender.com). (B)RT-QuIC detection of HY BH dilutions and stainless steel wires contaminated with HY BH dilutions. (C)RT-QuIC detection of contaminated stainless steel wires. A positive fluorescence threshold (illustrated by red line) was determined to be at 2. The maxpoint ratio reported is the ratio of the maximum fluorescence to the initial fluorescence reading obtained by the plate reader. Each point represents the average MPR from one biological replicate (mean ± standard deviation). For treated HY TME wires, each point is an average of 16 replicate wires, except one biological replicate for 70% EtOH-treated wires contained 15 replicate wires, and one biological replicate of H₂O-treated wires contained 14 replicate wires.