Most of us have heard of bacteria, fungi and viruses, but there are other infectious agents out there – prions and viroids.
What are prions?
The name prion was coined in 1981 by Dr. Stanley Prusiner to identify the agents that cause a novel type of fatal brain diseases. The name prion is derived from “proteinaceous infectious particles.” Prior to the discovery of prions, it was thought that infections were only caused by intact organisms. Therefore, the notion that a protein could cause disease was overturned. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease), sheep scrapie and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) of humans are examples of prion diseases.
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