Prion diseases

Prion-free cows are viable, develop normally

purepedantry | January 2, 2007

Prion diseases such as mad cow disease or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) are caused when normal proteins adopt an adverse conformational state. The protein sequence is the same as a normal protein; it has just adopted a conformation that causes it to aggregate or do other bad things. These diseases are transmissible because the protein is capable of inducing that conformation state in other normal proteins. If you get a little bit of the bad protein, it can make all of your proteins go bad as well. (It is so sad when good proteins start running with a bad crowd.) These diseases…