2 ms·
> Proteins have a half life of ~24 hours. All of them? I admit that I'm not a biologist, so that's new to me, but this would seem to put our bodies under immen
by jhgb 5y ago
> Proteins have a half life of ~24 hours.
All of them? I admit that I'm not a biologist, so that's new to me, but this would seem to put our bodies under immense stress if we had to replace half of all our proteins every day. If the average human body has 10 kg of proteins, this would mean the necessity of synthesizing 5 kg per day to prevent your death. Or is this specifically about PrP? If it's true that it doesn't last long, then perhaps stopping its synthesis would be a viable option.
Does the misfolded PrP have a different half-life?
- subroutine 5y agoThere is certainly a large standard deviation on that 24 hour average. Some proteins might last a few days. But we are talking on the order of days vs. the disease which takes on the order of years to manifest. Anyway I assume that the disease manifests as a result of bad PrP accumulation (much like how tau and Abeta protein accumulation eventually results in Alzheimer's disease; in fact Abeta has been described as having "prion like" properties regarding how Abeta clusters beget more clusters). So as soon as you shut down PrP synthesis, I doubt CJD could manifest, even if the current PrP in your body was immortal.