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Prions

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101–110 of 184 posts

Re: Prions

#101

Post by bb123 »

Scandiravian wrote: post #55
bb123 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your second point suggest that we should avoid eating beef?

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 :-)

Not meant as joke. I'm aware that there are lots of good reasons for not eating beef, I was wondering if prion exposure risk is one of them, as the meat/no-meat argument is one I try to revaluate regularly as new info comes to light. I eat beef once or twice a week as I have found it hard to get sufficient iron, protein, b12 and enough calories in general without it (and other meats). That and it tastes good, but I'm always receptive to new counterpoints.

Re: Prions

#102

Post by anonu »

geophile wrote: post #71

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.

That can be generalized to any journalist or media organization. Their currency is fear.

Re: Prions

#103

Post by hannasanarion »

tomphoolery wrote: post #36
purpleflame1257 wrote: post #3

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.

[flagged]

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.

Re: Prions

#104

Post by dnautics »

eggy wrote: post #98
dnautics wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is spot on (I'm a former prion researcher).

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!

That's real. Moderately high temperatures do not effectively destroy prions/amyloid.

Note that "burning to ash" is not that hot.

Re: Prions

#105

Post by bregma »

danesparza wrote: post #61
adrianN wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily humans can survive quite well without any meat at all.

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)

If it was deadly enough, that problem would take care of itself quite quickly. Tragically, but quickly.

Re: Prions

#106

Post by AnimalMuppet »

nikartix wrote: post #79
dnautics wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is spot on (I'm a former prion researcher).

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.

I don't think proteins will live forever in the wild. Between bacteria, fungi, and just oxidation, I'm pretty sure a protein just sitting out there on its own is going to have a finite half-life.

Re: Prions

#107

Post by elevaet »

virmundi wrote: post #28

[flagged]

I've dug around into this, and I'm certainly no more than an armchair biologist, but it seems highly unlikely to be a real risk. If spike proteins could mis-fold and become self-reproducing prions, this would have happened by now "in the wild" and it wouldn't depend on an mRNA vaccine to trigger the problem.

Re: Prions

#108

Post by odyssey7 »

im3w1l wrote: post #60
Ericson2314 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I disagree here, and but it's not fatal to your argument. Anything that reliably reproduces "wants" to. Hell, I bet prions can evolve too on large enough ti…

In order to evolve there has to be some kind of genetic information passed on to descendants. But for prions there is no such mechanism. A lower energy state is assumed and that's that.

This got me wondering: what is the advantage of genetic information (DNA / RNA) over a self-replicating entity without those convenient molecules?

My impression is that DNA / RNA-based organisms have a high tolerance for changes to their DNA / RNA, such that many genetic changes won't cause them to lose their self-replicating ability. This is great for evolution.

Prions, on the other hand, seem like they would have a low reproductive tolerance for changes to their structure.

Re: Prions

#109

Post by aprinsen »

>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

Re: Prions

#110

Post by newsbinator »

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?
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