(pree-on)

prions, pronounced as indicated above, not as the more intuitive "pry-on," are proteins responsible for TSEs, or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. TSEs include mad cow disease and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, as well as conditions that get less press, such as scrapie in sheep and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk.

anyway, prions fly in the face of accepted dogma in the biological sciences, because unlike every single other disease-causing agent known (bacteria, viruses, fungus, parasites of varying size), they do not need nucleic acids to reproduce. nucleic acids, of course, include DNA and RNA, which replicate by transmitting information about which kinds of proteins to build, and when.

prions, however, seem to only need proximity to operate. you can't really kill them through typical means, like radiation or extreme heat or cold, or through the interference of other cells or proteins. basically, as far as i can tell so far, nobody really knows how their presence starts to alter the other proteins near them. prions themselves are only (informationless) proteins, and disease-causing prions are misfolded proteins that somehow or another cause proximal proteins to become misfolded also.

so, i'm just thinking? that it is somewhat interesting that thus far, the most basic unit of biological science is one that is assumed to communicate transparently, by transmitting information to new places. and yet these things, these prions, elude the only way we have so far to understand communicability. there's a strange correspondance, in my mind, that i have quite a while before i can figure out, between assumptions about communication in the biological sciences and communication in the humanistic arts and sciences. i guess the term "affect" gets thrown around a lot, and maybe has had its day already, but maybe these prions communicate or replicate affectively, or, if not in a way that could be described affectively, at the very least by some mechanism that is not like the clunky old transparent communication model assumed by biological dogma. kinda interesting, to me, right now.