Prions Observed Jumping Species Barrier

palegray.net writes "Nature is reporting on new findings that prions jump species barriers. Believed to be responsible for ailments such as Creutzfeld-Jakob disease and 'mad cow' disease, prions are thought to disrupt biological processes by causing normal proteins to fold abnormally. Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston have observed infectious prions from hamsters causing abnormal protein development in mice, along with a range of other observations on prion actions in test tube environments. From the article: '... they also found that when a prion jumps species, it produces a new kind of prion. "This is very worrisome," says Claudio Soto, who led the research, published in Cell. "The universe of possible prions could be much larger than we thought."' Sounds like another good reason to donate your spare CPU cycles to projects like Folding@home."

Comments

Re:Worrisome?

[rrohbeck]

Problem is, the spinal cord (also infected) of animals is splattered all over the place if the slaughterhouse workers aren't careful.
"Stop eating dead cows" would be more appropriate. Of course, since Americans have the "beef is good for you" meme down pat (false, but ingrained by decades of advertising) that's not going to happen.

Re:Folding@Home

[PopeRatzo]

You start with a convection oven and just turn it around.