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Prions terrify me as well because it seems like there's no stopping them.. > In 2015, researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston f
by tauntz 5y ago
Prions terrify me as well because it seems like there's no stopping them..
> In 2015, researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston found that plants can be a vector for prions. When researchers fed hamsters grass that grew on ground where a deer that died with chronic wasting disease (CWD) was buried, the hamsters became ill with CWD, suggesting that prions can bind to plants, which then take them up into the leaf and stem structure, where they can be eaten by herbivores, thus completing the cycle. It is thus possible that there is a progressively accumulating number of prions in the environment
- medstrom 5y ago>It is thus possible that there is a progressively accumulating number of prions in the environment I really need to grow my own food.
- xeromal 5y agoMake sure to keep the deer out!
- Xcelerate 5y agoI had read this before. It's horrifying. How do you stop the chain reaction of proteins folding into lower energy states? It's not like a bacteria or virus; it's more like ice-nine, except instead of water it's your brain.
- adamhp 5y agoThis really puts it into perspective...
- anotha1 5y agoTo save someone else the time, the "ice-nine" referred to in this comment is fictional.
- fao_ 5y agoTo be fair, "Cat's Cradle" is a famous work of science-fiction
- anotha1 5y agoFor which generation?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nitrogen 5y agoFor a new generation of 10000 every day. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- fao_ 5y agoAre there many noteworthy modern science fiction authors that hold up to the Asimov / Clarke / Lem generation? I would think someone reasonably versed in science fiction would have at least heard of it -- I'm a "zoomer" and I have.
- shkkmo 5y agoWe have a number of very good modern science fiction authors that easily rival them. While none of them may be as iconic, I think that has more to do with competition in the genre and breadth of the market.
- omgwtfbbq 5y agoName some? My experience with authors like Cixin Liu and some contemporaries is that they are unreadable, this could just be bad translations in Liu's case but I'm not at all convinced modern writers rival the classical greats in SciFi.
- 5y ago
- giantg2 5y agoBleach works as surface decontamination agent. They know it works for CWD, and I expect it works for others too.
- fao_ 5y ago> Bleach works as surface decontamination agent. They know it works for CWD, and I expect it works for others too. I remember reading that nothing but incineration would work in the context of Food-and-Mouth disease, but it seems modern techniques in brain surgery do use bleach. Interesting. Essentially, the only thing that works is disintegrating the prions. You can't wash them off, since you're simply washing them into the water cycle. You can't deal with them in a way that preserves other biological matter, since they are proteins, disintegrating them means disintegrating any other proteins in that area.
- AbrahamParangi 5y agoPrions aren’t new, they’re probably as old as proteins- and they haven’t ice-nined the world yet.
- HDMI_Cable 5y agoTo be fair, neither did ice-nine until somebody decided to eat it.
- Metacelsus 5y agoGene-drive to edit wild animals so that they don't express PRNP (or express a stabilized version)
- titanomachy 5y agoStabilized maybe, it’s probably necessary for something even if we don’t know what yet.
- senthil_rajasek 5y agoThere is also a study from 2014 that suggests that prions were not detected in stems even though the roots of wheat plants were exposed to them. I don't know if there is conclusive evidence yet on getting sick by eating a plant based diet. "This suggests wheat was unable to transport sufficient PrP(TSE) from the roots to the stem to be detectable by the methods employed." Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24509640/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24509640/
- TearsInTheRain 5y agoMaybe this is a naive question, but your immune system works by identifying foreign proteins and killing those cells. Is there no way for your immune system to target cells contaminated with prions?
- LorenPechtel 5y agoThe fundamental issue with prions is that they are *not* foreign. Prions are legitimate proteins made by your own body but folded wrong. A misfolded protein acts like a catalyst to cause more misfolding. Prions are *not* alive, they have no ability to reproduce other than through misfolding existing proteins. It's basically a form of crystallization.
- littlestymaar 5y agoAntibodies are shape-sensitive though, so there could be antibodies targeting the mis-folded protein. In fact, maybe many people exposed to them where able to develop an immune response and we just don't know about it because these people never had any symptoms (think about the survivor bias, but in reverse, or from the point of view of the prion).