Nearly all organic material (like bacteria and viruses) is destroyed at temperatures above 60° Celsius. Some temperature resistant pathogens can survive slightly higher temperatures than this, but even the most hardy will be destroyed at temperatures above 150° Celsius.
But for prions these temperatures are hardly sufficient. They can survive being frozen, cooked, steamed, and even chemically treated with substances like formaldehyde and alcohol. Temperatures as high as 600° Celsius will not reliably kill them, and only in the 1000° Celsius range are they destroyed. At this temperatures, most *metals* will melt.
Why are prions so hard to destroy if they are chemically identical to the organic material inside our body already?
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>Nearly all organic material (like bacteria and viruses) is destroyed at temperatures above 60° Celsius.
It is not destroyed. A dead bacterium is still a bunch of organic material. Most of its components are just fine. That’s why other things can eat dead bacteria.
A bacterium is a complex system that requires many components to be in a specific configuration – or within a relatively small “acceptable window” of that configuration – to function. Further, a bacterium has constantly ongoing processes – and if those processes are disrupted, it is likely to also stop the whole system from functioning as “a bacterium” (and turn into “a pile of organic matter”).
By comparison, a prion is essentially just a single component. It isn’t interacting with anything. It has no internal processes (on this scale). It’s just sitting there.
So, a bacterium is comparable to a car; you can make the car stop working in a bunch of ways. Some of them are very low-effort. Cut some ignition wires, toss some sugar in the gas tank, overheat the engine, etc.
If a bacterium is a car, a prion is a bar of metal. Making a bar of metal stop being a bar of metal takes a *lot* of effort. You have to melt it or apply significant force.
So “killing” a bar of metal is harder than “killing” a car – even though a typical car has many “bars of metal” inside of it!
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