Assay methodology of the invention allows for: (1) determining if a sample contains a conformation of a protein which is associated with disease and the concentration and amount of such if present; (2) determining the amount of protease resistant disease related protein in a sample and by subtracting that amount from the total amount of disease related protein present determining the amount of protease sensitive disease protein in the sample; and (3) determining the strain and incubation time of a disease related protein by (i) relating the relative amounts of protease resistant and protease sensitive protein to known strains to thereby determine the strain; and (ii) plotting the concentration of protease sensitive protein on a graph of incubation time versus concentration of protease sensitive protein for known strains to predict the incubation time of an unknown strain of pathogenic protein in a sample.
CROSS-REFERENCE
This application is a continuation application of Ser. No. 09/151,057, filed Sep. 10, 1998 (now abandoned), which is a continuation-in-part application of Ser. No. 09/026,957, filed Feb. 20, 1998 now abandoned, which is a continuation-in-part application of Ser. No. 08/804,536, filed Feb. 21, 1997 now issued U.S. Pat. No. 5,891,641, issued Apr. 6, 1999, all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety and to which applications we claim priority under 35 U.S.C. .sctn.120.
The invention provides compositions and methods related to human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTRT), the catalytic protein subunit of human telomerase. The polynucleotides and polypeptides of the invention are useful for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of human diseases, for changing the proliferative capacity of cells and organisms, and for identification and screening of compounds and treatments useful for treatment of diseases such as cancers.
