An altered form of the large cellular prion protein accumulates in the CNS of patients with neurodegenerative disorders, and its protease-resistant core aggregates extracellularly into amyloid fibrils. This process is accompanied by nerve cell loss. The 21-peptide KTNMKHMAGAAAAGAVVGGLG is used as a model to investigate neurodegeneration in prion diseases. Prion Protein (106-126) forms fibrils in vitro and causes apoptotic cell death in neuron culture. Its neurotoxicity depends on the presence of microglia and is induced by microglia. It could be demonstrated that KTNMKHMAGAAAAGAVVGGLG is able to bind to DNA, a circumstance which led to the assumption that the integral protein could also bind to DNA under appropriate solution conditions.