1. Proteins are a chain sequence of amino acids, each link one of 20ish possibilities 2. These chains need to be folded in the right way for them to work properly 3. When they shape gets messed up, usually it just stops working (like when you fry an egg)
4. Prions are a completely fucked up case of a protein being misfolded 5. Instead of simply breaking, it gains a new function 6. Specifically the new function is taking correctly-folded versions of itself and misfolding them into its own bad shape 7. chain reaction 8. gg
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I'm not sure about this; protein folding is deeply tricky shit that generally requires enormous amounts of compute to understand via simulation (cf folding@home) Have an idea tho sec But also yes: it's completely unlike viruses (which hijack normal cell function to reproduce),
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