Mark--
He's got this part clearly wrong.
CJD was a 'prion' disease, so called after the minuscule protein particle that seemed to cause it, not a bacteria, not a microbe, but a virus, a sub-microscopic speck that had no DNA or genetic structure, A Flying Dutchman of a protein particle like an unpiloted plane, just a few simple atoms of death strung on an amino ribbon floating single-mindedly through a mammalian body until it found the area where it loves to root, the brain.
No RNA either, so it is not a virus.
Amazing Discovery
All our results pointed toward one startling conclusion: the infectious agent in scrapie (and presumably in the related diseases) did indeed lack nucleic acid and consisted mainly, if not exclusively, of protein. We deduced that DNA and RNA were absent because, like Alper, we saw that procedures known to damage nucleic acid did not reduce infectivity. And we knew protein was an essential component because procedures that denature (unfold) or degrade protein reduced infectivity. I thus introduced the term "prion" to distinguish this class of disease conveyer from viruses, bacteria, fungi and other known pathogens. Not long afterward, we determined that scrapie prions contained a single protein that we called PrP, for "prion protein."
sciam.com |
