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But prions aren't code. DNA is code. Proteins are factory robots, and the prion protein is a factory robot involved in the process of making factory robots. Ne

But prions aren't code. DNA is code. Proteins are factory robots, and the prion protein is a factory robot involved in the process of making factory robots. Neural proteins are very complicated, so they need other proteins to help them fold properly. One of these protein-folding-proteins (PRNP) can be mis-folded in such a way that it mis-folds other proteins in the same way that it is mis-folded itself. When most factory robots break, they simply stop working and they get recycled. But when a robot-making robot breaks in just the right way, it starts producing robot-making-robots that are broken just like itself.

ryanmercer 8y ago
>But prions aren't code. It was an analogy and reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteopathy#Seeded_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteopathy#Seeded_induction it sounds very much like they act like a piece of code corrupting another piece of code >Some proteins can be induced to form abnormal assemblies by exposure to the same (or similar) protein that has folded into a disease-causing conformation, a process called 'seeding' or 'permissive templating' That sounds a lot like many computer viruses >A computer virus is a type of malicious software that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code