I’ve not heard about them much until recently, where i keep seeing mention of them, what exactly are they?
In: Biology
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They are nothing more than a protein that is folded on itself in a way that causes other proteins to mess up too. They are not alive and require extreme temperatures to destroy. Luckily, relatively rare to infect humans.
Living things manage to be surprisingly tough and surprisingly delicate at the same time. Bacteria are living things, and we have a pretty good grasp on how to kill them. Calling viruses “living things” is a stretch, but they do have some of the characteristics of living things, and we’re starting to get a handle on how to kill them too (though for now, at least, vaccination is still a better solution: we don’t have broad-spectrum antivirals the way we have broad-spectrum antibiotics).
But a prion is just straight-up not alive. It’s a single protein, of a type that our bodies make normally: yo’re full of it, and so am I, and so are all mammals as far as we can tell. No one is quite sure yet what it does. But if one of these molecules gets bent ever so slightly in just the wrong way -it’s not even a different chemical, just a different shape- it takes our brains apart from the inside out. We don’t know what causes it to misfold. We don’t know how to fix it. The fact that it’s not alive means it can’t be killed in any of the classic ways, and we have a *lot* of trouble destroying it by more drastic means. It’s a horrifying way to go. And we haveno way to stop it other than strict quarantines.
Normal methods of disinfection don’t work on them. So for instance it is very hard to clean durable medical equipment that has been exposed to prions. So even through something has gone through normal sterilization, if it is contaminated with prions you could be exposed and develop a prion disease.
you get the uncurable brain crazies, then melt to black action going on
u do not want this, most would say at all costs
Your body is full of proteins. Proteins are molecules that are good for you. They help your body work good.
Prions are proteins that are “misfolded” meaning they somehow took the wrong shape. Those misfolded proteins can affect the other proteins around them in a sort of slow avalanche of degeneration and cell-death.
Mad Cow disease and Chronic wasting disease are prion diseases in cows and deer respectively. Eating meat from animals infected by these prion diseases can potentially cause you to contract a prion disease. It’s very uncommon in humans, but not impossible. Basically, the prion dissolves your brain slowly until you die. That’s not good.
The thing is though, you really don’t need to worry about it. They’ve been around forever and they’re never going away. It’s so, so rare for it to transmit to humans. You can maybe get it from eating the brains of a creature, but I doubt You’re having a brain for dinner tonight. You won’t get kuru from eating a steak.
Prions are proteins, large complex and weirdly shaped organic molecules that your body manufactures. There are a huge variety of different proteins, each serving specific functions in the body.
A prion is when a specific protein is misfolded in a specific way. This protein is non-functional now, but the issue is its very presence causes other proteins of the same type to misfold in a domino effect. This mass misfolding causes the proteins to stop doing whatever important job they had, and often causes the death of cells associated with them, leading to a slow and often unpleasant and incurable decline and eventual death of the afflicted creature, especially as prions most often cause the brain to break down.
Spontaneous occurrence of prions is ridiculously rare, so most cases of prion diseases are through transmission. In some prion diseases you need to physically eat the afflicted animal or even more specifically eat its brain to contract the disease, or in other prion diseases the afflicted animal can shed prions into the outside world, which can stick to stuff like plant leaves and get eaten along with the leaves later. What’s really concerning is prions are super tough compared to stuff like viruses, they can last for many years outside in the harsh elements and most of our techniques for sterilizing surfaces, food, and equipment of harmful microbes and viruses don’t even damage prions.
They are scary because they aren’t alive. Prions are just a protein.
We can kill bacteria (and viruses, despite not technically being alive), but how do you kill a protein?
We kill viruses and bacteria by breaking apart the pieces that hold them together. Basically ripping them apart through chemical processes, but those are separating molecules from each other, not breaking down those molecules. We can also kill them with heat, causing their protiens to misfold so the whole can’t function, and then by the time the temperatures return to normal, the bacteria or virus has died.
Prions are a misfolded protein that grabs other protiens and misfolds them. Heat could delay them, but when the temperature returns to normal, the protiens will retake their shape and continue their destruction. The heat would do more damage to the host body than it would the prion.
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