This week’s episode is nothing like any of our past episodes, and there will never be another quite like it. How can we be so sure, you ask? Because this week, we’re covering prions, the terrifying, genetic material-less infection that is 100% fatal and caused by nothing more than a humble protein. And not just any protein, a protein you already have in your body. Are you sweating yet? Good. Then settle in and listen to the amazing biology of this terrifying twisted proteinacious particle, the fascinating and fraught history that led to its discovery, and the current research on just how scared you need to be of prions in your brain.
| History | Biology |
| Mead, S., Stumpf, M. P., Whitfield, J., Beck, J. A., Poulter, M., Campbell, T., … & Collinge, J. (2003). Balancing selection at the prion protein gene consistent with prehistoric kurulike epidemics. Science, 300(5619), 640-643. | “Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy in humans” Belay 1999 |
| Max, Daniel T. The family that couldn’t sleep: a medical mystery. Random House, 2006. | “The public health impact of prion diseases” Belay and Schonberger 2005 |
| Prusiner, Stanley B. Madness and memory: the discovery of prions–a new biological principle of disease. Yale University Press, 2014. | “Darwinian Evolution of Prions in Cell Culture” Li et al 2010 |
| “WHO guidelines on tissue infectivity distribution in TSEs” WHO, 2006 | |
| “New Inhibitors of Scrapie-Associated Prion Protein Formation in a Library of 2,000 Drugs and Natural Products” Kocisco et al. 2003 | |
| “Treatment of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy by Intraventricular Drug Infusion in Animal Models” Doh-ura et al 2004 |
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