prions

For prions, tau (in Alzheimer's), and others, the story is a bit different.

So many corners could be cut without causing problems, but standard irradiation can't kill prions.

Prions are misfolded proteins; while prion diseases occur in the brain, I do not know of any evidence that the prions themselves are not found throughout the nervous system.

My PhD is focussing on addressing fundamental questions in how prions behave like they do.

It's very hard to be sure of removing all viruses and prions from a surface...

On the slow side, maybe they're as destructive as a nasty dose of prions.

Fatal familial insomniac's death is brough about by neurodegeneration caused by prions.

They took body fluid from one victim and passed it through a filter that would have stopped a virus, but the prions got through.

This led to a much better assessment of what prions are.

A falsifiable test was performed, the test succeeded, prions are real.

If you have 1 copy of the gene, if exposed to the prions, and if you're going to get it, then you'd get symptoms in 15-30 years.

With enough knowledge, we can theoretically do whatever we want with DNA, including make cells in apples produce prions that eventually cause Alzheimer's.

Interestingly, all life and "life" (virii, prions) serve the purpose of increasing entropy of the universe faster.

Eventually, if they continue the "hackers == terrorists" mantra...they'll start throwing them in prions without trials.

Prions may be arbitrary bad proteins, but they're especially problematic in the case of eating brains.

Prions are not considered alive under any reasonable definition of life.

Prions self replicate, but require the host to have the correctly folded protein.[1] Of course there's viruses too, which are self replicating but need to infect some other organism.