Sometimes we are forced to see things differently. But it is never easy because we are creatures of habit and, like it or not, shackled by what we were first led to believe. This is exactly what happened with the prion. Prions are proteins whose shape can change under certain conditions, and in so doing be at the heart of fatal diseases. Many afflictions are caused by a change in a protein's 3D structure, so this can hardly be considered a pioneering concept in the world of molecular biology. What is relatively new, however, is the notion that a protein can be the actual cause of infection. An infection is defined by an entity able to transmit, from one organism to another or indeed one cell to another, the information it needs to thrive and propagate. Viruses and bacteria infect organisms by multiplying inside them, killing off cells as they do so and causing havoc in their wake - such as meningitis, the classic flu or AIDS. Some prion proteins, once their shape has changed, are able to behave in the same way and cause neurodegenerative illnesses such as scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease in humans for instance. Recently, a prion of a different nature was discovered: one that refuses to change shape. Its name is PrP V127.
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机译：有时我们被迫以不同的方式看待事物。但这绝非易事，因为我们是习惯的创造者，无论是否喜欢，我们都被我们最初的信仰所束缚。 exactly病毒就是这样。 ions病毒是蛋白质，它们的形状在某些条件下会发生变化，因此是致命疾病的核心。蛋白质的3D结构发生变化会引起许多痛苦，因此在分子生物学领域几乎不能认为这是一个开创性的概念。然而，相对较新的观点是蛋白质可能是感染的真正原因。感染的定义是，一个实体能够从一个生物体传播到另一个生物体，或者实际上从一个细胞传播到另一个生物体，它需要繁衍和传播的信息。病毒和细菌通过在生物体内繁殖，杀死细胞而感染生物并在其后引起严重破坏，例如脑膜炎，经典流感或艾滋病，从而感染生物。一些病毒蛋白一旦形状发生变化，就能够以相同的方式起作用，并引起神经退行性疾病，例如绵羊的瘙痒病和人类的Creutzfeld-Jakob病。最近，发现了一种性质不同的病毒：一种拒绝改变形状的pr病毒。它的名称是PrP V 127 。
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