10 ms·

Prions

155 points by pccampbell 5y ago

decasia 5y ago
I for one would appreciate anyone who has expert biological knowledge commenting on this. I don't entirely dismiss this article since I have a friend who worked with prions in a bio lab at the Univ. of Chicago and I remember he was absolutely terrified of them. (And IIRC he reported having some doubts about laboratory safety protocols...) But I don't think he was afraid of this kind of apocalyptic endgame either; he just thought they were horrendously nasty stuff.
- balozi 5y ago
  The limited research there is on prions is heavily concentrated on the nasties. Its like learning about bacteria by studying Mycobacterium tuberculosis and coming to the conclusion that bacteria = death.
purpleflame1257 5y ago
Counterpoint: The Fore people of NZ had kuru from ritual cannibalism. Then they stopped. Eventually, the disease stopped too. Prions are nasty, but we've had 3.5 billion years of protein folding and none of it has ended the world yet.
- bradrn 5y ago
  (Quick correction: PNG, not NZ.)
- dnautics 5y ago
  This comment is spot on (I'm a former prion researcher).
  - cogman10 5y ago
    What do you make of CWD? That one scares me more than current known human prion disease. Mainly because it seems to spread really easily. Other prion diseases seem to practically require cannibalism to spread.
    - CountDrewku 5y ago
      CWD hasn't jumped to humans ever, correct?
      - deleted 5y ago
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      - giantg2 5y ago
        They don't really know, but the evidence suggests that it doesn't, or at least hasn't yet. There have been a few studies following up on groups of people who consumed CWD positive deer. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/02/21/zombie-deer-disease-what-happened-people-ate-cwd-meat/2926840002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/02/21/zombie...
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - danesparza 5y ago
        No. But Mad Cow Disease (also caused by prions) sure did. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy#Spread_to_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat...
    - dnautics 5y ago
      Cwd is essentially the same as bse and cjd and scrapie. It's actually the one that you have to worry about the least. For unknown reasons, there is not species crossover between deer and cow/sheep/humans (I was briefly investigating the molecular mechanisms for this but finished my phd before getting results). As for why the grazing animals can spread prion, my guess is that the prion protein is highly concentrated in the tongue, and grazing animals are likely to be able to pass the protein down to the ground via the saliva. Scrapie and bse are cross-transmissible Incidentally, you probably shouldn't eat beef tongue.
      - danesparza 5y ago
  - nikartix 5y ago
    How old are these proteins? If the do spread and remain dormant in soil they would have been a threat for entire existence of life on this planet. Exponential growth would only cause every place, especially a bio-reach locations to be full of it as food chain making more and more of the protein and animals remains are not handled in any way in the wild.
    - chasil 5y ago
      It appears that the first mention of scrapie in scientific literature is 1755, and the disease increased with inbreeding (and lessened when this practice was stopped): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114482/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114482/ The wiki also indicates that a sheep vaccine distributed in 1935 caused an epidemic, as it contained contaminated neural tissue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapie It also seems to me that the recent mRNA vaccines could be repurposed to target a section of a prion, so the immune system could clean them from the blood. An interesting question would test mRNA vaccine effectiveness in the cerebrospinal fluid, where microglia would be required to perform this function, as macrophages (and friends) are not present there.
      - eximius 5y ago
        This is a very interesting idea! But, is it known that macrophages are able to break down prions? My understanding of the problem is that part of it is that they're just quite hardy.
        chasil 5y ago
        Even if they can't, it's probably better for them to build up in macrophages, dendritic cells, etc. rather than in neurons.
        dnautics 5y ago
        Disagree. Every single antibody alzheimer's drug that has targeted the amyloid plaques and none of them have succeeded. You're just as likely to elicit an immune response to the prion plaques, stabilize them, and recruit inflammation to the point of deposit, making matters worse.
  - boringg 5y ago
    As a former prion researcher, do you eat meat or do you have reservations around that?
    - dnautics 5y ago
      I don't have reservations about it. I'm also not generally afraid to die.
      - boringg 5y ago
        Was curious if your research had tainted concerns around eating meat similar to commercial fisherman not eating fish due to work environment revelations. Glad to hear you aren't generally afraid to die though - sounds like a good stance to have.
  - eggy 5y ago
    Curious, I had heard of research where the brain of a sheep that was infected with a prion disease (not sure which), was burned to ash, and that ash placed on the exposed brain of a healthy sheep (via trepanation?), and it also developed the prion-caused disease. Is this anecdotal nonsense, or is it close to a real study done on prion diseases? Thanks!
    - dnautics 5y ago
      That's real. Moderately high temperatures do not effectively destroy prions/amyloid. Note that "burning to ash" is not that hot.
      - eggy 5y ago
        Wow, thanks for that! I don't know why I thought it would be so hot when I used to weld and cast metals. I remember when I was a kid we used to say something like, "I'll burn you to ashes" when playing. Still amazing that you can burn it and it's still potent.
  - aeternum 5y ago
    What are your thoughts on the risks of AlphaFold and prions? It seems like prions don't have much chance to evolve/mutate naturally since any change makes them unable to duplicate. However with these simulation systems, are man-made prions a concern?
    - dnautics 5y ago
      > naturally since any change makes them unable to duplicate. That's not true. Don't worry about alphafold. Even if it's a really good extrapolation engine (and not a really good interpolation engine) the amyloid fold is unusual enough that I doubt that alphafold can heuristically solve structures much less assess energetic or kinetic factors (which is not what it was designed to do). Note that I am an alphafold optimist and am on record here saying that I consider alphafold to have solved the basic protein folding problem. More to the point, we don't have many reliable solved structures of amyloid folds, it's clear that they are heterogeneous anyways, and iirc no one has bootstrapped an infectious prion in vitro, which means we don't know exactly what makes something infectious... We can make prion amyloid in vitro but it isn't infectious unless it was seeded by an infectious prion amyloid.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Globalization is a fairly new thing (on the 3.5B year timescale at least), allowing for the spread of any disease quickly. Whereas isolation and evolution has saved us in the past, it might not have the necessary time in the future (imagine if Covid had been even more deadly, for example).
  - jMyles 5y ago
    If COVID19 had been significantly deadly, presumably it would have burned out at the pace of SARS1. It seems to be close to the sweet spot in terms of being able to spread but still occasionally kill.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    Prions don't really spread on their own though, yes they are extremely hardy and can survive in soils but that doesn't do anything, if it did and isolation was the only solution we'd have thousands of prion-infested red zones where humans couldn't set foot. > imagine if Covid had been even more deadly, for example It'd have been taken more seriously, and it would have had a higher chance of burning itself out. Covid's such a pain in the ass because it hits such a sweet spot, of spreading fast, being highly infectious, and being benign enough (with many of the infected spreading it asymptomatically). For the hell that it is, the one "saving grace" of Ebola is that it debilitates and kills fast enough it's very hard for it to spread, especially as it doesn't have great transmission vectors.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - im3w1l 5y ago
      What I remember from middle school biology is that nutrients flow in a cycle. Organic matter in the soil will be composted and consumed by earth worms, funghi and microorganisms. And to them, prions are just organic matter like any other.
  - andy_ppp 5y ago
    If COVID were more deadly like Ebola it tends to not have long gestation periods where it can be spread without symptoms.
- danesparza 5y ago
  Agreed. Prions almost strike me as an interesting boundary condition for stupid behavior. But if most of the world's meat supply becomes effected by prion caused diseases (think: Chronic Wasting Disease https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/index.html ) then I think we truly might be in a tight spot.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Luckily humans can survive quite well without any meat at all.
    - Mordisquitos 5y ago
      So can deer.
      - kijin 5y ago
        Unlike deer, at least some humans are capable of not pooping and drooling on other people's food.
    - odyssey7 5y ago
      I’m not sure this would save you. The deer get CWD by eating the grass other deer have been around. A zoonotic CWD would find its way into plant-based diets.
    - danesparza 5y ago
      Agreed. What 2020 has shown us is that many humans can't cope with change well. This is what would cause us to be in a tight spot (IMHO)
      - bregma 5y ago
        If it was deadly enough, that problem would take care of itself quite quickly. Tragically, but quickly.
    - hourislate 5y ago
- tomphoolery 5y ago
  Thank you. I hate sensationalist articles like this. Countdown until some idiot right winger wants to ban prions.
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    Ban... prions? Do you think that you can go to the store and buy prions? Maybe we can also ban the common cold and HIV while we're at it.
    - hsuduebc2 5y ago
      I believe that was sarcasm my friend.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
SquibblesRedux 5y ago
As I read this, cellular automata lurked in the back of my mind. Despite the stochastic details, there is an eerie clockwork marching hiding under the covers of life.
- cryptoquick 5y ago
  When you put it that way, it sounds oddly poetic.
canadianfella 5y ago
I’m surprised these haven’t been weaponized by terrorists.
- doggodaddo78 5y ago
  What would the delivery system be? Waterborne? Food-borne?
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    (I read the OP comment as sarcasm.)
    - doggodaddo78 5y ago
      Also sarcasm
      - JKCalhoun 5y ago
        Whoosh! (me, LOL)
        doggodaddo78 5y ago
        It's okay. Lack of sarcasm tells in textual format leads to Poe's Law. ;) I wish English had inline accessory indicators to tack on tone for context instead of ambiguous wording, especially for critical conversations (that probably should be had by phone or in-person). Perhaps emoji serve this purpose? Why not some sort of diacritics though?
        canadianfella 5y ago
        I wasn’t being sarcastic at all, and I don’t see how the other comment was sarcastic. Aerosol a mad cow brain would be the crudest method.
      - canadianfella 5y ago
        How was that sarcasm?
SavantIdiot 5y ago
> Prions Are Going to End the World Get in line. /* reads TFA about prions binding in soil */ Please move to the front of the line.
tyho 5y ago
Ice-nine is the real threat!
im3w1l 5y ago
Prions are misfolded proteins. Because of mutations our proteins have tiny variations in them and it should not surprise me if some of them are more prone to misfolding than others. Currently it barely matters, but in a world rampant with prions, wouldn't we evolve more stable ones?
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  There's some space for prion evolution, but it's a very small set of possibilities. And more importantly, the little they can evolve, they do so at random, there is no genetic recombination step to merge the selection of unrelated features.
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    You misread me.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      Oh, indeed I misread it.
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  Evolution doesn't do magic. You could just as well ask, "in a world with solar UV rays, wouldn't we evolve cancer resistance?"
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    Arguably, we did. Our scalp is protected by hair, our flesh is covered by a skin, and the skin can tan. Then there are dna repair mechanisms, and apoptosis as the final line of defence. Cancer mainly takes the old, and is certainly no threat to the survival of mankind.
  - throwawayfeaxcz 5y ago
    We have evolved UV ray resistance, it's called being black.
incrudible 5y ago
I remember that in the 90s, when "mad cow disease" was dominating the headlines, it was predicted that there would be an exponential increase in cases, decades down the line. The same point about prions being virtually indestructible was being made, the same concerns about surgical equipment and blood donations were raised. Suffice it to say, the prion disaster did not materialize, so I'm skeptical about the same story being repeated almost verbatim today. My guess is that prions aren't all that contagious after all, especially after basic food preparation measures.
- ipython 5y ago
  The concerns about blood donations continue to this day. A few years ago I went to a blood bank event not even thinking about vCJD and was turned away because I happened to live in Europe for more than 6 months in the early 90s. It is a bit unnerving to know you may or may not have a disease that there is no test for, and symptoms may not appear until decades later.
  - 813594 5y ago
    You might want to check again to see if you’re eligible now. They ended some of these restrictions on blood donation in the summer of 2020.
    - ipython 5y ago
      Thanks! It appears that the new restrictions no longer apply to me. I’ll be off to give blood later this month.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    ...out of "an abundance of caution". > It is a bit unnerving to know you may or may not have a disease that there is no test for, and symptoms may not appear until decades later. That's true for many neurodegenerative diseases. If that's unnerving to you, better stay away from WebMD...
- xenadu02 5y ago
mc32 5y ago
Prions are like the real-life version of ice-nine. Just much slower moving.
throwaway_kufu 5y ago
I wonder if there might not be something similar to the Prion mechanism that cause the healthy brain protein to “change chiralities” and join the prion group on the atomic level that might give insight into the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
> Ancient and odd but relatively easy to talk about, viruses are the perfect vector for the horrors peddled by the BBC, New York Times, and their ilk. Proceeds to peddle the "horrors" of prions.
- wrinkl3 5y ago
  Yeah I'm not a huge fan of the way the article is written. The concerns are undoubtedly real, but the pearl-clutchy tone and the endless barrage of asides and pop culture references make me doubt the author's conclusions.
virmundi 5y ago
It might come sooner than we thought with the Covid vaccines. https://scivisionpub.com/pdfs/covid19-rna-based-vaccines-and-the-risk-of-prion-disease-1503.pdf https://scivisionpub.com/pdfs/covid19-rna-based-vaccines-and... Ah yes, HN: we downvote science we don’t like.
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  Read the website of the author of that garbage paper and decide for yourself whether you feel like it’s a good decision to broadcast it to a wider audience: vaccines.net > We are concerned that the current outbreak of COVID-19 is actually a bioweapon attack and may be linked to the US anthrax attack of 2001, which originated from the US army base Fort Detrick. > The former FBI agent in charge of the US anthrax attack investigation, Richard Lambert, alleged that his superiors acted to inhibit his investigation and prematurely closed the case after it was determined the anthrax used for the attack came from Fort Detrick. This revelation (see this link) as well as Dr. Classen's first hand experience working 3 years at Dr. Tony Fauci's NIAID leads him to be more than concerned that there is a contingent in the US government that is not acting in the public interest regarding bioweapons. Classen notes NIAID received substantial funds for bioweapons research after the domestic anthrax attack . He considers this quite alarming given activities he observed at NIAID and the relationship he observed between people at NIAID and the nearby Fort Detrick.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    For additional context, the author is JB Classen. From his Wikipedia page: > A widely-reposted 2021 Facebook post claiming that the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 could cause prion diseases was based on a paper by Classen. The paper was published in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, whose publisher, Scivision Publishers, is included in Beall's list of publishers of predatory journals. Vincent Racaniello, professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, described the claim as "completely wrong". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Bart_Classen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Bart_Classen
    - mikeyouse 5y ago
legitster 5y ago
Prions are pretty scary, but I think there are a lot of things this article gets wrong. - Prions are resistant to sterilization (since there is nothing to "kill"), but simple soap and water are still highly effective - Prions don't "last forever". They can live in buried carcasses for a few years, but some studies have shown that even our existing sewage treatment processes already break down a lot of prions. - While vegans might have some risk, meat multiplies the risk because of how it can concentrate prions. I have to imagine that vegans have an incredibly low risk profile for prions. - Most importantly, viruses and bacteria innately "want" to spread. Prions do not have any biological mechanism for their own propagation - they are just an unfortunate mistake of nature. And this seems to be key why there has never been a massive prion outbreak. If you were an anarchist rooting for the collapse of society, as this writer seems to pitching for, sure it seems like it might be a more likely vector than many.
- bb123 5y ago
  Does your second point suggest that we should avoid eating beef?
  - nefitty 5y ago
    For people who are intensely worried about prions, it seems that eating less meat will decrease their chance of exposure.
  - legitster 5y ago
    I mean, there are a lot of reasons to not to. And I say that as a meat eater.
  - Scandiravian 5y ago
    I think there's better arguments than a risk of prion disease for cutting beef (or meat in general) from your diet - not sure if your comment is meant as a joke that I'm not catching, so I'll hold out on going into details unless you're interested :-)
    - 5y ago
cryptica 5y ago
Could this explain why everyone seems to be getting dumber? Have we all been infected by prions already and our brains are decaying?
- deleted 5y ago
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ortusdux 5y ago
prion infections are always eventually fatal, there is no cure, and they are contagious. The majority of research into prions happens post mortem, and is usually trying to pin down the cause of death. Statistically, there must be prions that are not lethal. I'm reminded of the issues with people that work at pig processing plants, who had the job of blowing the brains out of the skull cavity with compressed air. Many were not issued proper PPE and ended up with a wide variety of symptoms. https://www.twincities.com/2008/02/06/minn-to-question-25-more-in-meatpacking-illness-probe/ https://www.twincities.com/2008/02/06/minn-to-question-25-mo...
- Scandiravian 5y ago
  I think that's an interesting point. Do you have a source for your statement, that most of the research happens post mortem? It makes sense to me that non-lethal cases wouldn't be discovered, as it's probably prohibitively expensive to screen for non-lethal/dormant infections. It could also be that the progression is so slow for most people, that they die from unrelated causes before the disease becomes a problem (this is pure conjecture on my part)
  - ortusdux 5y ago
    The first promising blood test for mad cow (vCJD) was developed in 2016. Prior to that, "The only current method to diagnose vCJD is to perform a biopsy or a postmortem analysis of brain tissue." (NIH 2017). https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/new-method-accurately-detects-prions-blood https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/new-met... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5538786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5538786/ Scientists have since developed a promising method that relies on analyzing the retina. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-identify-locations-early-prion-protein-deposition-retina https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-ide...
    - Scandiravian 5y ago
      Thank you for the links - I look forward to reading the articles :-)
Ericson2314 5y ago
I understand the argument here, and how ill-prepared we are for steady low-coefficient exponentials, but never more have I felt like the 2nd law of thermodynamics is my friend. Even if 1 prion can kill you, even if prions will survive in the soil indefinitely, I think we are going to erode all the topsoil faster than the prions can accumulate in concentrations sufficient to cause issues.
djinnandtonic 5y ago
I wouldn't be too worried about this. I'm noticing chatter in the worst parts of the internet around COVID vaccines causing prion disease, it's likely just the latest disinfo by Q types. This site hosts white-supremacist aligned articles (like this one supporting the dehumanizing NPC meme: https://www.countere.com/home/how-to-spot-an-npc https://www.countere.com/home/how-to-spot-an-npc) so I wouldn't be too worried about an article here about the "end of the world"
GlenTheMachine 5y ago
So one of the oldest known prion diseases is a disease of sheep called scrapie. It is not transmissible to humans, thankfully. It turns out that there is genetic resistance to it. There's a specific gene, of which there are two forms, called Q and R. If a sheep is Q-Q, it has no resistance. If it is Q-R is has some resistance. If it is R-R it is completely immune. All of which is to say: we should not just assume that exposure to prions results in a 100% disease rate, nor should we assume that prion disease itself has a 100% mortality rate. Because the diagnosis for prion disease is clinical. In other words, we only know someone has the prion if they show signs of the disease. And we only look for the disease once someone starts showing significant signs of disease. But there is no test that shows that you ave been exposed, nor is there a test that shows you have been infected but that your infection is spreading so slowly that (say) prostate cancer or heart disease will kill you long before the prion does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapie
geophile 5y ago
This guy is trying really, really hard, wildly inflating our susceptibility, our risk, the vectors by which prions can be transmitted, everything. I hope I never sit next to him on a long plane flight.
- anonu 5y ago
  That can be generalized to any journalist or media organization. Their currency is fear.
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    What reputable journalist or media organization claims that the secret jewish new world order is using vaccines to inject people with prion diseases like this guy does?
- deleted 5y ago
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aprinsen 5y ago
>The anti-globalist movement of the 90s is long dead. The far-left which fueled it has been co-opted, down to the level of its language and internalized identities, by global business interests. Coordinators of anarchist riots appear in Forbes; there are anarchist professors and journalists. No citations Lots of fear Thinly veiled far right rhetoric
- legitster 5y ago
  This article is coming from the far left, not right. I think he is bemoaning the lack of real anarchists. But perhaps horseshoe theory strikes again.
newsbinator 5y ago
Asking naively: is anybody doing research on good prions: proteins that get other proteins to fold correctly/helpfully, beating out bad prions in the process?
- marsdentech 5y ago
  You might be interested in reading about "chaperone proteins"!
bitL 5y ago
So, is it because prions managed to attain a lower energy configuration than similar proteins, forcing them to reconfigure themselves upon contact with a prion, causing a cascade of protein deformation that is super stable and can't be reversed? Like protein configuration = local minimum, prion configuration = global minimum?
- trenchgun 5y ago
  It's like the protein version of vacuum collapse.
Metacelsus 5y ago
The article is completely wrong about the prion mechanism. >The prion’s structure is corruptive because it is not a copy but a mirror image of the protein, flipped in the opposite direction. In technical terms, some groups of prions have the opposite chirality—Greek for “handedness”—of their normal cousin proteins. The prion is doubly corruptive because it does not keep its inversion to itself: when it encounters its mirror image—a normal protein—it convinces that image to flip, to change chiralities and join the prion group. The amino acids don't change their chirality, only the protein's secondary structure.
sparker72678 5y ago
If the issue is a protein folding the wrong way, and inducing that fold into nearby proteins, why doesn't this just happen spontaneously in humans?
iandanforth 5y ago
TLDR: "prions are ice-nine for proteins across all life"
shnp 5y ago
I came across an article about vaccination against ingested prions a while back. I couldn't find the exact one that I read a year ago... the one I read talked about a test where the vaccinated mice survived while the unvaccinated mice died quickly. Prion diseases are scary psychologically because the early stages are almost the same as any other neurodegenerative disease. For those who are suffering from one, who would likely develop some sort of depression early on, really gives them doubts about their lifespan. This is from personal experience. Here's a bunch of articles about it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18215090/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18215090/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17234125/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17234125/ https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-12/nlmc-fsv121714.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-12/nlmc-fsv1217...
hsuduebc2 5y ago
Why this get flagged?
robertlagrant 5y ago
Why do prions cause our proteins to reverse, and not vice versa?
kjrose 5y ago
Prions used to bug me as an idea for quite a while when I was an undergrad. However, since I have worked in a biolab and I actually read material that isn't just fear mongering, I can tell you a ton of stuff that makes this article totally wrong. Prions don't live forever, they are susceptible to soap and water. Prions are proteins, anything that can break down a protein will work to break down a prion. They are not some form of mystical protein. They will break down naturally over time. This is why regions that have had Kuru outbreaks have been able to stop those outbreaks. Since prions are literally just a chemical (albeit a complex one), they are not trying to propagate themselves. There have been outbreaks, but no massive ones with prions because that's simply not how they work. As well, since they are proteins and proteins eventually break down when they are removed from a living being, they will also eventually break down. This article is a whole lotta fear with not a whole lotta valid info.

155 points by pccampbell 5y ago

I for one would appreciate anyone who has expert biological knowledge commenting on this. I don't entirely dismiss this article since I have a friend who worked with prions in a bio lab at the Univ. of Chicago and I remember he was absolutely terrified of them. (And IIRC he reported having some doubts about laboratory safety protocols...) But I don't think he was afraid of this kind of apocalyptic endgame either; he just thought they were horrendously nasty stuff.

balozi 5y ago
The limited research there is on prions is heavily concentrated on the nasties. Its like learning about bacteria by studying Mycobacterium tuberculosis and coming to the conclusion that bacteria = death.

purpleflame1257 5y ago

Counterpoint: The Fore people of NZ had kuru from ritual cannibalism. Then they stopped. Eventually, the disease stopped too. Prions are nasty, but we've had 3.5 billion years of protein folding and none of it has ended the world yet.

bradrn 5y ago
(Quick correction: PNG, not NZ.)
dnautics 5y ago
This comment is spot on (I'm a former prion researcher).
- cogman10 5y ago
  What do you make of CWD? That one scares me more than current known human prion disease. Mainly because it seems to spread really easily. Other prion diseases seem to practically require cannibalism to spread.
  - CountDrewku 5y ago
    CWD hasn't jumped to humans ever, correct?
    - deleted 5y ago
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    - giantg2 5y ago
      They don't really know, but the evidence suggests that it doesn't, or at least hasn't yet. There have been a few studies following up on groups of people who consumed CWD positive deer. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/02/21/zombie-deer-disease-what-happened-people-ate-cwd-meat/2926840002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/02/21/zombie...
      - deleted 5y ago
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    - danesparza 5y ago
      No. But Mad Cow Disease (also caused by prions) sure did. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy#Spread_to_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat...
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Cwd is essentially the same as bse and cjd and scrapie. It's actually the one that you have to worry about the least. For unknown reasons, there is not species crossover between deer and cow/sheep/humans (I was briefly investigating the molecular mechanisms for this but finished my phd before getting results). As for why the grazing animals can spread prion, my guess is that the prion protein is highly concentrated in the tongue, and grazing animals are likely to be able to pass the protein down to the ground via the saliva. Scrapie and bse are cross-transmissible Incidentally, you probably shouldn't eat beef tongue.
    - danesparza 5y ago
- nikartix 5y ago
  How old are these proteins? If the do spread and remain dormant in soil they would have been a threat for entire existence of life on this planet. Exponential growth would only cause every place, especially a bio-reach locations to be full of it as food chain making more and more of the protein and animals remains are not handled in any way in the wild.
  - chasil 5y ago
    It appears that the first mention of scrapie in scientific literature is 1755, and the disease increased with inbreeding (and lessened when this practice was stopped): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114482/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114482/ The wiki also indicates that a sheep vaccine distributed in 1935 caused an epidemic, as it contained contaminated neural tissue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapie It also seems to me that the recent mRNA vaccines could be repurposed to target a section of a prion, so the immune system could clean them from the blood. An interesting question would test mRNA vaccine effectiveness in the cerebrospinal fluid, where microglia would be required to perform this function, as macrophages (and friends) are not present there.
    - eximius 5y ago
      This is a very interesting idea! But, is it known that macrophages are able to break down prions? My understanding of the problem is that part of it is that they're just quite hardy.
      - chasil 5y ago
        Even if they can't, it's probably better for them to build up in macrophages, dendritic cells, etc. rather than in neurons.
        dnautics 5y ago
        Disagree. Every single antibody alzheimer's drug that has targeted the amyloid plaques and none of them have succeeded. You're just as likely to elicit an immune response to the prion plaques, stabilize them, and recruit inflammation to the point of deposit, making matters worse.
- boringg 5y ago
  As a former prion researcher, do you eat meat or do you have reservations around that?
  - dnautics 5y ago
    I don't have reservations about it. I'm also not generally afraid to die.
    - boringg 5y ago
      Was curious if your research had tainted concerns around eating meat similar to commercial fisherman not eating fish due to work environment revelations. Glad to hear you aren't generally afraid to die though - sounds like a good stance to have.
- eggy 5y ago
  Curious, I had heard of research where the brain of a sheep that was infected with a prion disease (not sure which), was burned to ash, and that ash placed on the exposed brain of a healthy sheep (via trepanation?), and it also developed the prion-caused disease. Is this anecdotal nonsense, or is it close to a real study done on prion diseases? Thanks!
  - dnautics 5y ago
    That's real. Moderately high temperatures do not effectively destroy prions/amyloid. Note that "burning to ash" is not that hot.
    - eggy 5y ago
      Wow, thanks for that! I don't know why I thought it would be so hot when I used to weld and cast metals. I remember when I was a kid we used to say something like, "I'll burn you to ashes" when playing. Still amazing that you can burn it and it's still potent.
- aeternum 5y ago
  What are your thoughts on the risks of AlphaFold and prions? It seems like prions don't have much chance to evolve/mutate naturally since any change makes them unable to duplicate. However with these simulation systems, are man-made prions a concern?
  - dnautics 5y ago
    > naturally since any change makes them unable to duplicate. That's not true. Don't worry about alphafold. Even if it's a really good extrapolation engine (and not a really good interpolation engine) the amyloid fold is unusual enough that I doubt that alphafold can heuristically solve structures much less assess energetic or kinetic factors (which is not what it was designed to do). Note that I am an alphafold optimist and am on record here saying that I consider alphafold to have solved the basic protein folding problem. More to the point, we don't have many reliable solved structures of amyloid folds, it's clear that they are heterogeneous anyways, and iirc no one has bootstrapped an infectious prion in vitro, which means we don't know exactly what makes something infectious... We can make prion amyloid in vitro but it isn't infectious unless it was seeded by an infectious prion amyloid.
falcolas 5y ago
Globalization is a fairly new thing (on the 3.5B year timescale at least), allowing for the spread of any disease quickly. Whereas isolation and evolution has saved us in the past, it might not have the necessary time in the future (imagine if Covid had been even more deadly, for example).
- jMyles 5y ago
  If COVID19 had been significantly deadly, presumably it would have burned out at the pace of SARS1. It seems to be close to the sweet spot in terms of being able to spread but still occasionally kill.
- masklinn 5y ago
  Prions don't really spread on their own though, yes they are extremely hardy and can survive in soils but that doesn't do anything, if it did and isolation was the only solution we'd have thousands of prion-infested red zones where humans couldn't set foot. > imagine if Covid had been even more deadly, for example It'd have been taken more seriously, and it would have had a higher chance of burning itself out. Covid's such a pain in the ass because it hits such a sweet spot, of spreading fast, being highly infectious, and being benign enough (with many of the infected spreading it asymptomatically). For the hell that it is, the one "saving grace" of Ebola is that it debilitates and kills fast enough it's very hard for it to spread, especially as it doesn't have great transmission vectors.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    What I remember from middle school biology is that nutrients flow in a cycle. Organic matter in the soil will be composted and consumed by earth worms, funghi and microorganisms. And to them, prions are just organic matter like any other.
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  If COVID were more deadly like Ebola it tends to not have long gestation periods where it can be spread without symptoms.
danesparza 5y ago
Agreed. Prions almost strike me as an interesting boundary condition for stupid behavior. But if most of the world's meat supply becomes effected by prion caused diseases (think: Chronic Wasting Disease https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/index.html ) then I think we truly might be in a tight spot.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Luckily humans can survive quite well without any meat at all.
  - Mordisquitos 5y ago
    So can deer.
    - kijin 5y ago
      Unlike deer, at least some humans are capable of not pooping and drooling on other people's food.
  - odyssey7 5y ago
    I’m not sure this would save you. The deer get CWD by eating the grass other deer have been around. A zoonotic CWD would find its way into plant-based diets.
  - danesparza 5y ago
    Agreed. What 2020 has shown us is that many humans can't cope with change well. This is what would cause us to be in a tight spot (IMHO)
    - bregma 5y ago
      If it was deadly enough, that problem would take care of itself quite quickly. Tragically, but quickly.
  - hourislate 5y ago
tomphoolery 5y ago
Thank you. I hate sensationalist articles like this. Countdown until some idiot right winger wants to ban prions.
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  Ban... prions? Do you think that you can go to the store and buy prions? Maybe we can also ban the common cold and HIV while we're at it.
  - hsuduebc2 5y ago
    I believe that was sarcasm my friend.
deleted 5y ago
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SquibblesRedux 5y ago

As I read this, cellular automata lurked in the back of my mind. Despite the stochastic details, there is an eerie clockwork marching hiding under the covers of life.

cryptoquick 5y ago
When you put it that way, it sounds oddly poetic.

canadianfella 5y ago

I’m surprised these haven’t been weaponized by terrorists.

doggodaddo78 5y ago
What would the delivery system be? Waterborne? Food-borne?
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  (I read the OP comment as sarcasm.)
  - doggodaddo78 5y ago
    Also sarcasm
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      Whoosh! (me, LOL)
      - doggodaddo78 5y ago
        It's okay. Lack of sarcasm tells in textual format leads to Poe's Law. ;) I wish English had inline accessory indicators to tack on tone for context instead of ambiguous wording, especially for critical conversations (that probably should be had by phone or in-person). Perhaps emoji serve this purpose? Why not some sort of diacritics though?
      - canadianfella 5y ago
        I wasn’t being sarcastic at all, and I don’t see how the other comment was sarcastic. Aerosol a mad cow brain would be the crudest method.
    - canadianfella 5y ago
      How was that sarcasm?

SavantIdiot 5y ago

> Prions Are Going to End the World Get in line. /* reads TFA about prions binding in soil */ Please move to the front of the line.

tyho 5y ago

Ice-nine is the real threat!

im3w1l 5y ago

Prions are misfolded proteins. Because of mutations our proteins have tiny variations in them and it should not surprise me if some of them are more prone to misfolding than others. Currently it barely matters, but in a world rampant with prions, wouldn't we evolve more stable ones?

marcosdumay 5y ago
There's some space for prion evolution, but it's a very small set of possibilities. And more importantly, the little they can evolve, they do so at random, there is no genetic recombination step to merge the selection of unrelated features.
- im3w1l 5y ago
  You misread me.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Oh, indeed I misread it.
hannasanarion 5y ago
Evolution doesn't do magic. You could just as well ask, "in a world with solar UV rays, wouldn't we evolve cancer resistance?"
- im3w1l 5y ago
  Arguably, we did. Our scalp is protected by hair, our flesh is covered by a skin, and the skin can tan. Then there are dna repair mechanisms, and apoptosis as the final line of defence. Cancer mainly takes the old, and is certainly no threat to the survival of mankind.
- throwawayfeaxcz 5y ago
  We have evolved UV ray resistance, it's called being black.

incrudible 5y ago

I remember that in the 90s, when "mad cow disease" was dominating the headlines, it was predicted that there would be an exponential increase in cases, decades down the line. The same point about prions being virtually indestructible was being made, the same concerns about surgical equipment and blood donations were raised. Suffice it to say, the prion disaster did not materialize, so I'm skeptical about the same story being repeated almost verbatim today. My guess is that prions aren't all that contagious after all, especially after basic food preparation measures.

ipython 5y ago
The concerns about blood donations continue to this day. A few years ago I went to a blood bank event not even thinking about vCJD and was turned away because I happened to live in Europe for more than 6 months in the early 90s. It is a bit unnerving to know you may or may not have a disease that there is no test for, and symptoms may not appear until decades later.
- 813594 5y ago
  You might want to check again to see if you’re eligible now. They ended some of these restrictions on blood donation in the summer of 2020.
  - ipython 5y ago
    Thanks! It appears that the new restrictions no longer apply to me. I’ll be off to give blood later this month.
- incrudible 5y ago
  ...out of "an abundance of caution". > It is a bit unnerving to know you may or may not have a disease that there is no test for, and symptoms may not appear until decades later. That's true for many neurodegenerative diseases. If that's unnerving to you, better stay away from WebMD...
xenadu02 5y ago

mc32 5y ago

Prions are like the real-life version of ice-nine. Just much slower moving.

throwaway_kufu 5y ago

I wonder if there might not be something similar to the Prion mechanism that cause the healthy brain protein to “change chiralities” and join the prion group on the atomic level that might give insight into the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

> Ancient and odd but relatively easy to talk about, viruses are the perfect vector for the horrors peddled by the BBC, New York Times, and their ilk. Proceeds to peddle the "horrors" of prions.

wrinkl3 5y ago
Yeah I'm not a huge fan of the way the article is written. The concerns are undoubtedly real, but the pearl-clutchy tone and the endless barrage of asides and pop culture references make me doubt the author's conclusions.

virmundi 5y ago

It might come sooner than we thought with the Covid vaccines. https://scivisionpub.com/pdfs/covid19-rna-based-vaccines-and-the-risk-of-prion-disease-1503.pdf https://scivisionpub.com/pdfs/covid19-rna-based-vaccines-and... Ah yes, HN: we downvote science we don’t like.

mikeyouse 5y ago
Read the website of the author of that garbage paper and decide for yourself whether you feel like it’s a good decision to broadcast it to a wider audience: vaccines.net > We are concerned that the current outbreak of COVID-19 is actually a bioweapon attack and may be linked to the US anthrax attack of 2001, which originated from the US army base Fort Detrick. > The former FBI agent in charge of the US anthrax attack investigation, Richard Lambert, alleged that his superiors acted to inhibit his investigation and prematurely closed the case after it was determined the anthrax used for the attack came from Fort Detrick. This revelation (see this link) as well as Dr. Classen's first hand experience working 3 years at Dr. Tony Fauci's NIAID leads him to be more than concerned that there is a contingent in the US government that is not acting in the public interest regarding bioweapons. Classen notes NIAID received substantial funds for bioweapons research after the domestic anthrax attack . He considers this quite alarming given activities he observed at NIAID and the relationship he observed between people at NIAID and the nearby Fort Detrick.
- nefitty 5y ago
  For additional context, the author is JB Classen. From his Wikipedia page: > A widely-reposted 2021 Facebook post claiming that the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 could cause prion diseases was based on a paper by Classen. The paper was published in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, whose publisher, Scivision Publishers, is included in Beall's list of publishers of predatory journals. Vincent Racaniello, professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, described the claim as "completely wrong". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Bart_Classen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Bart_Classen
  - mikeyouse 5y ago

legitster 5y ago

Prions are pretty scary, but I think there are a lot of things this article gets wrong. - Prions are resistant to sterilization (since there is nothing to "kill"), but simple soap and water are still highly effective - Prions don't "last forever". They can live in buried carcasses for a few years, but some studies have shown that even our existing sewage treatment processes already break down a lot of prions. - While vegans might have some risk, meat multiplies the risk because of how it can concentrate prions. I have to imagine that vegans have an incredibly low risk profile for prions. - Most importantly, viruses and bacteria innately "want" to spread. Prions do not have any biological mechanism for their own propagation - they are just an unfortunate mistake of nature. And this seems to be key why there has never been a massive prion outbreak. If you were an anarchist rooting for the collapse of society, as this writer seems to pitching for, sure it seems like it might be a more likely vector than many.

bb123 5y ago
Does your second point suggest that we should avoid eating beef?
- nefitty 5y ago
  For people who are intensely worried about prions, it seems that eating less meat will decrease their chance of exposure.
- legitster 5y ago
  I mean, there are a lot of reasons to not to. And I say that as a meat eater.
- Scandiravian 5y ago
  I think there's better arguments than a risk of prion disease for cutting beef (or meat in general) from your diet - not sure if your comment is meant as a joke that I'm not catching, so I'll hold out on going into details unless you're interested :-)
  - 5y ago

cryptica 5y ago

Could this explain why everyone seems to be getting dumber? Have we all been infected by prions already and our brains are decaying?

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ortusdux 5y ago

prion infections are always eventually fatal, there is no cure, and they are contagious. The majority of research into prions happens post mortem, and is usually trying to pin down the cause of death. Statistically, there must be prions that are not lethal. I'm reminded of the issues with people that work at pig processing plants, who had the job of blowing the brains out of the skull cavity with compressed air. Many were not issued proper PPE and ended up with a wide variety of symptoms. https://www.twincities.com/2008/02/06/minn-to-question-25-more-in-meatpacking-illness-probe/ https://www.twincities.com/2008/02/06/minn-to-question-25-mo...

Scandiravian 5y ago
I think that's an interesting point. Do you have a source for your statement, that most of the research happens post mortem? It makes sense to me that non-lethal cases wouldn't be discovered, as it's probably prohibitively expensive to screen for non-lethal/dormant infections. It could also be that the progression is so slow for most people, that they die from unrelated causes before the disease becomes a problem (this is pure conjecture on my part)
- ortusdux 5y ago
  The first promising blood test for mad cow (vCJD) was developed in 2016. Prior to that, "The only current method to diagnose vCJD is to perform a biopsy or a postmortem analysis of brain tissue." (NIH 2017). https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/new-method-accurately-detects-prions-blood https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/new-met... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5538786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5538786/ Scientists have since developed a promising method that relies on analyzing the retina. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-identify-locations-early-prion-protein-deposition-retina https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-ide...
  - Scandiravian 5y ago
    Thank you for the links - I look forward to reading the articles :-)

Ericson2314 5y ago

I understand the argument here, and how ill-prepared we are for steady low-coefficient exponentials, but never more have I felt like the 2nd law of thermodynamics is my friend. Even if 1 prion can kill you, even if prions will survive in the soil indefinitely, I think we are going to erode all the topsoil faster than the prions can accumulate in concentrations sufficient to cause issues.

djinnandtonic 5y ago

I wouldn't be too worried about this. I'm noticing chatter in the worst parts of the internet around COVID vaccines causing prion disease, it's likely just the latest disinfo by Q types. This site hosts white-supremacist aligned articles (like this one supporting the dehumanizing NPC meme: https://www.countere.com/home/how-to-spot-an-npc https://www.countere.com/home/how-to-spot-an-npc) so I wouldn't be too worried about an article here about the "end of the world"

GlenTheMachine 5y ago

So one of the oldest known prion diseases is a disease of sheep called scrapie. It is not transmissible to humans, thankfully. It turns out that there is genetic resistance to it. There's a specific gene, of which there are two forms, called Q and R. If a sheep is Q-Q, it has no resistance. If it is Q-R is has some resistance. If it is R-R it is completely immune. All of which is to say: we should not just assume that exposure to prions results in a 100% disease rate, nor should we assume that prion disease itself has a 100% mortality rate. Because the diagnosis for prion disease is clinical. In other words, we only know someone has the prion if they show signs of the disease. And we only look for the disease once someone starts showing significant signs of disease. But there is no test that shows that you ave been exposed, nor is there a test that shows you have been infected but that your infection is spreading so slowly that (say) prostate cancer or heart disease will kill you long before the prion does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapie

geophile 5y ago

This guy is trying really, really hard, wildly inflating our susceptibility, our risk, the vectors by which prions can be transmitted, everything. I hope I never sit next to him on a long plane flight.

anonu 5y ago
That can be generalized to any journalist or media organization. Their currency is fear.
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  What reputable journalist or media organization claims that the secret jewish new world order is using vaccines to inject people with prion diseases like this guy does?
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aprinsen 5y ago

>The anti-globalist movement of the 90s is long dead. The far-left which fueled it has been co-opted, down to the level of its language and internalized identities, by global business interests. Coordinators of anarchist riots appear in Forbes; there are anarchist professors and journalists. No citations Lots of fear Thinly veiled far right rhetoric

legitster 5y ago
This article is coming from the far left, not right. I think he is bemoaning the lack of real anarchists. But perhaps horseshoe theory strikes again.

newsbinator 5y ago

Asking naively: is anybody doing research on good prions: proteins that get other proteins to fold correctly/helpfully, beating out bad prions in the process?

marsdentech 5y ago
You might be interested in reading about "chaperone proteins"!

bitL 5y ago

So, is it because prions managed to attain a lower energy configuration than similar proteins, forcing them to reconfigure themselves upon contact with a prion, causing a cascade of protein deformation that is super stable and can't be reversed? Like protein configuration = local minimum, prion configuration = global minimum?

trenchgun 5y ago
It's like the protein version of vacuum collapse.

Metacelsus 5y ago

The article is completely wrong about the prion mechanism. >The prion’s structure is corruptive because it is not a copy but a mirror image of the protein, flipped in the opposite direction. In technical terms, some groups of prions have the opposite chirality—Greek for “handedness”—of their normal cousin proteins. The prion is doubly corruptive because it does not keep its inversion to itself: when it encounters its mirror image—a normal protein—it convinces that image to flip, to change chiralities and join the prion group. The amino acids don't change their chirality, only the protein's secondary structure.

sparker72678 5y ago

If the issue is a protein folding the wrong way, and inducing that fold into nearby proteins, why doesn't this just happen spontaneously in humans?

iandanforth 5y ago

TLDR: "prions are ice-nine for proteins across all life"

shnp 5y ago

I came across an article about vaccination against ingested prions a while back. I couldn't find the exact one that I read a year ago... the one I read talked about a test where the vaccinated mice survived while the unvaccinated mice died quickly. Prion diseases are scary psychologically because the early stages are almost the same as any other neurodegenerative disease. For those who are suffering from one, who would likely develop some sort of depression early on, really gives them doubts about their lifespan. This is from personal experience. Here's a bunch of articles about it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18215090/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18215090/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17234125/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17234125/ https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-12/nlmc-fsv121714.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-12/nlmc-fsv1217...

hsuduebc2 5y ago

Why this get flagged?

robertlagrant 5y ago

Why do prions cause our proteins to reverse, and not vice versa?

kjrose 5y ago

Prions used to bug me as an idea for quite a while when I was an undergrad. However, since I have worked in a biolab and I actually read material that isn't just fear mongering, I can tell you a ton of stuff that makes this article totally wrong. Prions don't live forever, they are susceptible to soap and water. Prions are proteins, anything that can break down a protein will work to break down a prion. They are not some form of mystical protein. They will break down naturally over time. This is why regions that have had Kuru outbreaks have been able to stop those outbreaks. Since prions are literally just a chemical (albeit a complex one), they are not trying to propagate themselves. There have been outbreaks, but no massive ones with prions because that's simply not how they work. As well, since they are proteins and proteins eventually break down when they are removed from a living being, they will also eventually break down. This article is a whole lotta fear with not a whole lotta valid info.