'Shadoo' prion sheds light on BSE

'Shadoo' prion sheds light on BSE

www.newscientist.com

PRION diseases such as BSE and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) just got more complicated.

These diseases destroy the brain when a wrongly folded version of a prion protein called PrP begins converting normal PrP - which usually protects the brain - into the misfolded variety. Researchers had suspected that other types of prion might exist in the brain, but none had ever been identified - until now.

(visit the link for the full news article)

The problem with all prion research is that they "assume" they can study a normal brain. However, since the prion invasion began in the 1870's they are no "normal" subjects. They is an opinion on this very website that prions are formed from electromagnatic contamination of normal proteins. They may also be affected by chemical polution. Either way prions are likely the source of many brain and perhaps other cronic disease.

www.newscientist.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by astmonster


So basicly the hype that was on about it being cause by fx. bad meat from cows is now out of the loop? Meaning that the disease in fact already is in us and bad meat is merely in some cases a triggereffect?

This would mean that there could be other triggereffects or could it happen randomly too?

[edit on 27/8/07 by flice]

reply to post by flice


Prion have no known "enemies" they "accumulate" they never "DIE", they clump together in fish, vegetables, heck............everywhere.

They are just "protein"....how they infect others is unknown.

Search the ATS archives........

reply to post by flice


No, that's not what the article is saying. They're saying there are multiple types of "good" prions, and that they'd found a second one they named "shadoo", and that it complements the normal PrP prion.

You produce these normally. The issue is when they misfold. When proteins are made, they're intended to fold a certain way. The usefulness of most proteins depends on their shapes, and on the pattern of electrical charges on them.

The structure of the proteins normally determines how they fold, but it's not always the only way they can fold, and the other shape(s) they can assume may be useless or harmful. There are other enzymes and what are called "chaperone" molecules which either re-fold, denature or destroy the errant proteins.

You produce some misfolded proteins as a matter of statistics, but you destroy them, normally. Other proteins may be misfolded in a way which you have no enzymes or chaperones to deal with, and they accumulate. Worse, they may come in contact with normally folded proteins and cause them to misfold as well.

That's the case with errant prions, at least the vCJD and Kuru types, I'm sure there are others.

It really hasn't got beans to do with "electromagnetic contamination", whatever that might be. Protein folding is a really complex issue, and it's really easy for it to "go wrong". Kuru is a prion disease, and was known to infect the Fore before 1900, scrapie is a prion disease of sheep and has been recorded back as far as the mid 1700's. That sort of rules out "electromagnetic contamination" as a possibility, if you consider you have defensive systems against this sort of thing in your cells that also tells you the general problem exists all the time. It's just that the vCJD and Kuru prions (and now possibly a misfolded shadoo) are things you have no defensive systems tailored for specifically.

reply to post by Tom Bedlam


Actually prion related disease tend to group around or near bio-research facilities that used high speed centrifuge. The prions ended up as clumps of "contamination" at the bottom of the test tubes and were simply flushed down drains. There they accumulated in the surrounding environment. Example is the "ground zero" location of the western deer and elk CWD near the rocky mountian bio-research facility in upstate colorado.

The source of prion related diease dates farther back than even 1700's, however, since the "electric" revolution the prion has exploded. Several leading theories include electromagnetic contamination on the atomic level that alter the folding of the prion. Others include chemicals and still other the filtering and accumulation around research facilities.

I'm afraid it's hard to see how prions are both some sort of test tube contamination and related to "electromagnetic contamination" and existent prior to the 1700's. I can't imagine what "electromagnetic contamination on the atomic level" might actually mean.

At any rate, the truth is that any protein can and does misfold, but you've got other systems that dispose of them in most cases.

The reason that there are deer and elk with the same disease, and it's definitely NOT just in Colorado, is that the deer eat the cattle feed. The feed contained prions from feeding recycled cows back to cattle as protein (smart idea, that).

Beef cattle don't live long enough to develop the BSE. Deer can, though.

The fact that the deer are coming down with it pretty much says that the feed had BSE contamination in it. That's one reason I buy grassfed beefalo by the side. Not only is it more healthful, it isn't fed cattle feed.