If a Prion can misfold other proteins, why can’t you make an enzyme or another prion that undoes the fold?

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I remember hearing that prions like mad cow disease are misfolded proteins that manipulate other proteins they come into contact with. If that’s the case why can’t you use another prion to unfold it and restore it to normal?

In: Biology

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Anonymous 0 Comments

We do have proteins that do this, there’s a class of proteins called Heat Shock Proteins that are expressed in response to cell stress (they were discovered by heat shock, but there are actually up regulated by all types of stress!)

You should read the [Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_shock_protein) for a quick intro. That article doesn’t have anything about neural tissues though I think.

The brain is a very special place, it’s possible that heat shock proteins are not expressed in Neurons, so any peptides or proteins which can cross the blood brain barrier (I.e. prions) can go unchecked, but I actually don’t know much about it.

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