Re:Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, See...
by mattmaroon on Monday December 10, 2018 @01:08PM
(#18649836)
I think the main difference is an imperfectly-replicated virus or bacteria might still be viable.
A prion only makes itself. Even if it replicated imperfectly, the odds of a slightly different misfolded protein becoming another prion are vanishingly small (otherwise we'd all be dead) because there probably just are very, very few configurations possible. The vast majority of misfolded proteins just do nothing.
There are several billion humans who are each replicating millions of copies of each of the 20,000 or so proteins during their lifetimes. It seems pretty unlikely that there are many misfolds that haven't occurred. It's just that only a handful become prions. And even if they do, prions are thankfully very hard to communicate (again, we'd all be dead if they weren't).
A prion only makes itself. Even if it replicated imperfectly, the odds of a slightly different misfolded protein becoming another prion are vanishingly small (otherwise we'd all be dead) because there probably just are very, very few configurations possible. The vast majority of misfolded proteins just do nothing.
There are several billion humans who are each replicating millions of copies of each of the 20,000 or so proteins during their lifetimes. It seems pretty unlikely that there are many misfolds that haven't occurred. It's just that only a handful become prions. And even if they do, prions are thankfully very hard to communicate (again, we'd all be dead if they weren't).