Prions
Priones: proteínas infecciosas
- Date
- 1982 · confidence high
- Place
- UCSF, San Francisco, United States
- Credited to
- Stanley Prusiner
- People
- 👤 Stanley B. Prusiner1942–
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
The infectious agent of scrapie and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, made up solely of a misfolded protein that propagates its conformation, with no nucleic acid involved.
The 'protein-only' hypothesis was highly controversial; Nobel Prize 1997.
What it led to
- understanding of the mad cow disease crisis (1986-1996)
- the misfolding-disease paradigm (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's)
- revision of the dogma that biological information requires nucleic acids
Built on
- kuru (Gajdusek)
- scrapie
Made possible
- Recombinant human growth hormone1979-1985
- food and transfusion safety controls