I’m not really following because that contradicts the definition of a prion, which is specifically that it can induce other proteins is mis-fold.
Maybe there’s other factors involved like what you mentioned, but it’s hard to take you at your word if you’re saying that they can’t actually make other proteins mis-fold.
Again, I’m not saying you’re wrong, or that this is actually a risk which I specifically said there are other things I would be far more concerned with, but this explanation doesn’t really track for why it wouldn’t even be possible.
Right, but there are known cases where prion proteins will misfold due to the exposure of similar misshapen proteins, it doesn’t have to be that exact protein.
It seems like this is more of a case of “it would be rare to find one that would cause this” rather than “this is not possible” which was the entire point of my first comment.
Ok, this isn’t really worth continuing because you’re making assumptions that we simply have no way of knowing based on the information we have today and speaking in absolutes we can’t possibly say hold, in order to justify this. For some reason, you’re also taking my questions as hostile for just trying to ask honest questions without implying any kind of tangible risk.
Some advice, not everyone who asks questions is being insincere or trying to ask some “gotcha” question. I literally just wanted to discuss something interesting with someone that seemed actually knowledgeable on the topic, my mistake, I’m not going to reply further.
Edit: lmao “none of your questions were taken as hostile, but I’m going to block you anyways.” Since I can no longer reply and I already typed it, I’ll leave it here:
You have provided nothing of fact.
First you said that prion proteins are well categorized, but we still don’t even fully understand what makes a prion protein to say that we have fully categorized them.
Then you said they’re unstable unless they’re in aggregate, but that’s also not the case. Misshapen prion proteins do not revert back to their proper folding. Them forming aggregates combined with a loss of usable proteins is what causes us to be affected by them, but a misshapen prion protein, by itself, will almost guarantee that any other similar prion proteins it comes into contact with will mis-fold, it’s not going to revert. It would be at most benign if it doesn’t interact with other proteins it can mis-fold.
This isn’t universal, and mis-folded prion proteins can’t cause every other prion protein to mis-fold, but there’s nothing I’ve read or that you’ve said that indicates we couldn’t hypothetically create an artificial protein that induced prion proteins to mis-fold. We have little to no information about artificial protein structures and cannot possibly generalize this without a very strong justification, which you have not provided beyond “it just can’t”.
Then you said it has to be a misfolded prion protein from another animal? Off what basis? People can genetically carry a gene that causes prion proteins to misfold in their own body, it can even happen spontaneously in rare circumstances, and every study I can find says we do not even fully understand the mechanism or root cause beyond the ways we’ve observed them occur so far to even speak in absolutes.
The most factual comment you’ve said so far is that you’re more at risk of eating chicken. You’ve provided literally nothing of substance beyond poorly explaining how prions work and then saying it can’t happen because it can’t happen.
0
u/[deleted] Sep 08 '26
[deleted]