3 ms·
3...2..1.. Prion disease! Can you explain that?
by e40 9y ago
3...2..1.. Prion disease!
Can you explain that?
- y2kenny 9y agoI guess OP was alluding to diseases caused by bad protein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion#Prion_diseases_and_their_transmission_properties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion#Prion_diseases_and_their... A well known example is mad cow disease.
- jfarlow 9y agoPrions are 'misfolded' proteins [1] that, in their misfolded form actually cause other proteins to also misfold - a physical viral cascade. A really crazy concept not too dissimilar from a kind of biological 'grey goo' - and in real life actually happens to cause diseases like 'mad cow'. The implication is that blindly engineering a protein might create such a physical virus. I would suggest that the likelihood of accidentally creating such a virus is very much like accidentally creating stuxnet. Possible, but extraordinarily unlikely. And further, would such a thing be made, we'd like to know about it while it's still in the lab and can be contained, learned about, and prevented in the future. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion