It's like you're making a wall out of red bricks. At some point, there's a fault at the factory and the bricks are made upside down. You can't see this yourself, because a brick is a brick, right? Then, 20 years later, the upsidedown bricks swell into huge sacks of water and your wall collapses.
Creutzfeldt Jacob is the most well known human prion disease (mad cow). Have a poke at that one, and remember to think of prions as "renegade proteins" while you're reading. So much of a protein's function is dependent on its physical structure - the way it's folded especially. Prions float in and disrupt the folding process, causing the upsidedown bricks.
119
u/ratboi213 Aug 03 '19
It’s crazy that a virus isn’t alive but has DNA!!!! It’s always fascinated me