Prion
The Prion Diseases
Prions, once dismissed as an impossibility, have now gained wide recognition as extraordinary agents that cause a number of infectious, genetic and spontaneous disorders
Description & History
Fifteen years ago I evoked a good deal of skepticism when I proposed that the infectious agents causing certain degenerative disorders of the central nervous system in animals and, more rarely, in humans might consist of protein and nothing else. At the time, the notion was heretical. Dogma held that the conveyers of transmissible diseases required genetic material, composed of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA), in order to establish an infection in a host. Even viruses, among the simplest microbes, rely on such material to direct synthesis of the proteins needed for survival and replication.
