United States: A tiny protein called a prion is responsible for a dangerous condition that can harm the brain. Unlike bacteria, fungi, and viruses, prions don’t have any genetic material like DNA. Instead, they can change into a harmful form that turns healthy proteins into more prions. This process can destroy the brain over time.
In a new book called The Power of Prions, scientist Michel Brahic explores these strange proteins and their effects.
He is an expert in microbiology from France more famously associated with prions for almost three decades now. Though he personally devoted his activity to the study of viral causes of brain diseases, he was one of the first colleagues of Stanley Prusiner, one of the future winners of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of prions.
As reported by Gizmodo, at a later time in his career, Brahic devoted his research to discovering whether other proteins in the brain can cause diseases such as Parkinson’s in the same way as normal prions cause diseases such as CJD or mad cow disease.
In his new book, Brahic describes the process by which prions multiply and destroy brain tissue, a process leading to universally fatal but fortunately extremely rare disease of humans such as kuru or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, chronic wasting disease of deer and mad cow disease of cows otherwise known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
Lyons gives the audience a brief, no-nonsense description of how the nervous system and proteins work before he goes into the story.
He also talks about the studies concerning prion-like proteins pertaining to disorders such as Alzheimer’s and type two diabetes; and the reason why prion-like proteins’ chaos is fundamental to life.
When the author of The Selfish Gene came to edit the science pages at the New Scientist, I was lucky enough to be on the team, says Brahic Following this interview, Gizmodo spoke to Brahic about why he decided to delve deep into a book about prions, how prions might inform our understanding of other, much more common disorders, and the biggest riddles left to solve about these “molecular devils.” The next dialogue has been edited to exclude profanities and mic for improved clarity when necessary.
Ed Cara, Gizmodo: You have dedicated your work as a virologist to learn how viruses and lastly prions affect the brain. What led you to write such a book about these elusive proteins capable of affecting the healthy functioning of human body for the nonspecialist readership?
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