Biology of Prions

TL;DR

This paper reviews the biology of prions, emphasizing the mammalian PrP prion, their infectious nature, diversity across species, and potential beneficial roles beyond disease causation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of prion biology, highlighting their genetic-like behavior, diversity, and possible functional roles in organisms.

Findings

Prions behave like genes through their tertiary structure.

Multiple types of prions exist across different organisms.

Prions may have beneficial roles in cells and evolution.

Abstract

In this paper we will review various aspects of the biology of prions and focus on what is currently known about the mammalian PrP prion. Also we briefly describe the prions of yeast and other fungi. Prions are infectious proteins behaving like genes, i.e. proteins that not only contain genetic information in its tertiary structure, i.e. its shape, but are also able to transmit and replicate in a manner analogous to genes but through very different mechanisms. The term prion is derived from "proteinaceous infectious particle" and arose from the Prusiner hypothesis that the infectious agent of certain neurodegenerative diseases was only in a protein, without the participation of nucleic acids. Currently there are several known types of prion, in addition to the originally described, which are pathogens of mammals, yeast and other fungi. Prion proteins are ubiquitous and not always detrimental to their hosts. This vision of the prion as a causative agent of disease is changing, finding more and more evidence that they could have important roles in cells and contribute to the phenotypic plasticity of organisms through the mechanisms of evolution.