FIGURE 15.

Time-dependent number of PrP^sc polymers as it follows from the numerical simulation of the set of equations in Eq. 11, including the time-dependence of the number of monomers (full line) together with the experimental data (points) (Rubenstein et al., 1991). The abundance of the fibrils (given in this reference as a number of PrP^sc per a square element of the substrate) was obtained by negative-stain electron microscopy at various times after intracerebral inoculation. The measurements were performed for the spleens of Compton white mice and C57BL/6j mice. The dashed line show the prediction of the simplified model with the same rate constants but with a constant number of monomers, x₀ = λ/d; see Eq. 13. The parameters are n = 6, a = 0.027, b = 4.8 × 10⁻⁴, β = 0.8, λ = 1080, and d = 215.