Maybe I misunderstood something, and they asked not about this, but yes, maybe. There are such prion infections. Where is the infection in the form of protein. It has neither DNA nor RNA. These things do not carry any hereditary information, but they can multiply in our body, and it always ends badly.
Have you heard about mad cow disease?
There are such diseases of sheep and other animals, in which the brains of animals collapsed. For a very long time they could not figure out the reasons for this disgrace, until they found their prions.
Prions are proteins that behave like viruses. The word itself consists of parts of the words "protein" and "infection".
In fact, prions are the same proteins found in our cells. The only difference is how these proteins are twisted in space.
Normal proteins in our cells are usually small and easily destroyed by special enzymes on occasion. But once Nature in a very cunning way conjured over some of the proteins in our cells, wrapped them in a ram's horn, and the proteins turned into prions.
These prions act as a powerful catalyst. That is, if this prion meets its normal relative inside the cell, then it will instantly attach to it, twist it into ram's horn in its own image and likeness and will repeat this number many many times until it makes a long chain-thread of such mutants.
This chain of monster proteins grows at both ends and lengthens. Then the chain breaks, and you get two chains, which also cling to themselves from both sides more and more new proteins.
It turns out that instead of a small amount of soluble proteins, deposits of useless garbage accumulate inside the cell. The cells die from this. And more often this happens in nerve cells.
Such an infection actually does not look like a virus or a bacterium, and therefore the immune system does not react to it. In a few months or several decades, prions destroy the brain, and a cow or a person dies. It is impossible to fix this. A bad outcome is inevitable.
In addition to domestic animals, some savages were sick with this terrible thing, who ate the brains of their relatives.
It is a rarity. Usually, if people get sick, it is more likely from a hereditary prion disease, when the problem protein itself is generated in the cells.
English epidemic
Back in the nineties of the last century, there was a tiny epidemic of such mad cow disease in England. 10 or more Englishmen and a few Europeans died there. The catch was that the young people were sick. They fell ill quickly and became infected rather through meat.
Then the whole planet shuddered, the British were forbidden to donate blood in Europe, and they stopped feeding livestock food from the same chopped livestock.
No serious epidemic has occurred, the number of cases has declined, and no one is particularly worried about this.
In short, there is always a chance that such an infection will be poured into you with the blood of a sick person, or with preparations from animal raw materials (hello to Actovegin!).
There have been cases when prion disease was brought in with surgical instruments. The point is that prions are not nucleic acids. You can't just sterilize them.
Well, that is, prions can be heated in an autoclave at 140 degrees or scalded with radiation, but they will still be infectious. A very persistent dirty trick. I even had to come up with special chemicals that are guaranteed to destroy the structure of these dastardly proteins.
These things are said to infiltrate the clay around livestock farms and can even be carried through the air. If we were more susceptible to such an infection, it would be scary.
But it is not all that bad. It is difficult to pick up prion disease, it develops slowly, and in general not everyone is susceptible to it.
True, it is better not to donate blood to yourself from people who lived in England in the eighties and nineties of the last century.
Not sure about blood and brain steaks. I think prions are so stable that the degree of roast does not matter. True, here I immediately remembered how I ate raw buffalo meat in Vietnam, and someone's boiled brains in Turkey. It's somehow restless now ...
And you didn’t eat anyone’s brains?
