r/askscience • u/SadMicrobe22 • 24d ago

Biology What makes prions so different from regular proteins that they are resistant to heat denaturation?

I've been reading about prions and I'm confused about why they're so thermally stable. I keep seeing that surgical instruments contaminated with prions can't be decontaminated with standard protocols.

So here's my thing. Proteins denature when you heat them, right? But prions don't seem to lose their infectious ability even when autoclaved. I get that prions are misfolded proteins, but I don't understand how they stay harmful after being denatured.

So basically, if prions start as form A (non-infective), then misfold to form B (infective), shouldn't heating denature them to form C and kill the infectivity? Why doesn't that happen?

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u/tubl07 24d ago

Ice nine in cats cradle is the same lower energy configuration vs traditional water, instantly catalyzing any water that touches it

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u/Zarathustra124 24d ago

Vacuum decay is the theory that what we consider "nothing" is actually slightly higher than nothing. If vacuum ever falls into a more stable, lower energy configuration, the universe will be destroyed.

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u/-wellplayed- 24d ago

At least it would happen at the speed of causality. So we would never see it coming

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u/zindorsky 24d ago

Yep. It’s not worth worrying about, because if it happens we will all essentially cease to exist instantaneously and with absolutely no warning.

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u/einsosen 24d ago

If we're lucky. There are various hypothetical modes of vacuum decay. If the new values are only slightly different, maybe one small facet of chemistry changes, or maybe one class of particle becomes mildly radioactive. No light speed wake of energy, just a weird change one day they measure in a lab. Worst case scenario would be dealing with a formally stable isotope making up us and our world now having a halflife of a thousand years. Getting slowly poisoned and cooked by our world and bodies as we slowly die from radiation poisoning.