To be honest, it may all be semantics. Does synuclein aggregate? for sure. Do they self aggregate? probably. Are they "prions"? That I'm not sure, as they a

To be honest, it may all be semantics. Does synuclein aggregate? for sure. Do they self aggregate? probably. Are they "prions"? That I'm not sure, as they are probably molecularly quite different than say CJD or GSS proteins. But "prions" is a scientifically flashy term, tied not at least in small part to Prusiner's personality (and of Olanow, who I'm sure is helping stir up the pot a little bit), and gets a lot of buzz. I think the effort and the debate are worth it though because on the top of it all, prion or not, the root cause of Parkinson's disease is still not known. At least several million bucks of taxpayer money will probably go to prion-related grants because of the publicity and interested of various research groups, and while the prion idea may pan out or not, it can only add to the effort to figure out how this all starts in the body.