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‘Zombie deer disease’ epidemic spreads in Yellowstone as scientists raise fears it may jump to humans
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2023
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This has me wondering, what happens to prions in the environment, ultimately? Presumably they're nothing new, so if they're that hard to destroy, shouldn't they just have been building up in the environment ever since the first ones formed? Does something eat them, somehow?
Aw man. I'm about to ruin your day.
I’m gonna stop eating all together just to be safe.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease can happen spontaneously, meaning one of your prions becomes misfolded. It can also be genetic or caught due to medical equipment that hasn't been properly cleaned or from using human tissue from cadavers (iatrogenic). There's even been a case of variant CJD from packed red blood cells.
Have a merry Christmas!
I’m gonna stop ~~eating~~ existing all together just to be safe.
That's rather concerning, but doesn't really answer what I was asking. I was wondering what eventually ends up destroying prions out in nature, presuming something does (I imagine something must, otherwise after hundreds of millions of years of complex life existing, wouldn't prions just be absolutely everywhere, making any life using the affected proteins basically impossible?)
Ah! Well you want this one then.
And something to remember, the prions we're talking about really only came about with the advent of mammals. And we know of only one or two more kinds of prions and that's about it. But it's likely that there are prions for all kinds of animals out there and that there is a increase and decrease of particular kinds of prions based on the prevalent animals of the time.
So the PrP family of prions may just be having a recent "in all of life on this planet context" swelling of numbers. And when mammals aren't around any longer, they'll see a precipitous decline. Maybe this is some underlying factor that drives some kind of quantum evolution (which is a very controversial idea that evolution has "spikes" that drive rapid evolution from time to time), very likely not but fun to think about at least to me.
Ah, so if Im understanding that correctly, things like weather and microbial activity does destroy them over time, just slowly enough that they can persist at levels reasonably likely to cause infection for a very long time? Now Im sort of wondering just how long its possible to detect them in any concentration for, and if its possible to deduce any kind of useful information about the proteins that they were "supposed" to be from one. Like, given that they arent living things that need food or energy, might there still be a few prions from currently extinct species still around, in places that are free of the things that normally slowly degrade them? Could such prions if found tell us anything useful about the biochemistry of the species that they came from? It also has me thinking about how, if they can get inside plants and transmit that way and also have variants known to affect humans, and given that agricultural fields are both unguarded and impractical to completely monitor, they would make for an absolutely horrific sort of terrorist weapon, but thats not something Id like to contemplate too hard.
It does surprise me to hear that we only know of a few types though. From the (very limited) understanding I had, I had sort of assumed that all proteins had a corresponding prion that represented some sort of lower energy ground state for them that they all had a tiny chance of spontaneously falling into, like, false vacuum decay but for proteins, or something.
Well fuck, yet another reason for me to hate lawns. They're potential prion reservoirs!
You should see my reply to the other guy in this thread. You'll feel so much worse.
Luckily I already know about CJD, a friend of mine has it. Prions suck!
Wildfires can reach temperatures of 800°C (1470°F)!
Good news: We destroyed the zombie prion. Bad news: Climate change is absolutely going to end us.