[HN Gopher] Deer are beta-testing a nightmare disease
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       Deer are beta-testing a nightmare disease
        
       Author : colinprince
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2024-02-03 19:30 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
        
       | colinprince wrote:
       | https://archive.is/ryj69
        
       | Terr_ wrote:
       | > the molecules can linger in soil, on trees, and on hunting bait
       | for years or decades.
       | 
       | Given the proliferation of biological life, I assume that there's
       | some scavenger, decomposer, or abiotic process that is notable in
       | destroying proteins lying around...
       | 
       | Are these prion-proteins unusually durable, or is it about
       | average?
        
         | vexed_vulpine wrote:
         | its bleeding edge research so take it with lots of caveats but
         | it looks like big cat digestion may destroy prions
         | 
         | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34878289/
         | 
         | but yes they are extremely challenging to destroy
        
       | darth_avocado wrote:
       | Prions are nightmare fuel. It's surprisingly not as much talked
       | about despite the damage they can cause.
       | 
       | - There is not cure or prevention - can linger in soil, on trees,
       | and on hunting bait for years or decades - really hard to detect,
       | since it takes years to show the symptoms - induce behavior where
       | prions get to spread more - potential to jump species, including
       | primates
        
         | _qua wrote:
         | It's quite interesting that they're not more of problem thus
         | far.
        
           | huytersd wrote:
           | The only one I know of is Kuru which passes from person to
           | person in Papua New Guinea due to cannibalism.
        
             | AlotOfReading wrote:
             | Kuru is generally considered extinct, since funerary
             | cannibalism hasn't been practiced for decades and there
             | haven't been new cases in many years despite an incubation
             | period of up to 50 years.
        
       | pvaldes wrote:
       | Put wolves at charge of solving the problem. They seem to be
       | immune to the prion and are extremely good keeping deer
       | populations healthy. Is what they do.
       | 
       | This is the result of having crowded game farms, basically
       | breeding deer like rabbits and accumulating them on small areas
       | so people can come and have fun shooting.
        
         | huytersd wrote:
         | Wolves may solve the deer problem but the article is talking
         | about a bigger paradigm than that where this might appear in
         | humans and we're not ready.
        
       | huytersd wrote:
       | I would assume the only way to counteract this would be to come
       | up with some sort of counter folded protein that we would have to
       | continually take and is always present in the blood before
       | infection. As soon as the prion hits, it would combine with one
       | of these and become harmless. Maybe with enough time we could
       | come up with a genetically engineered way to have our immune
       | systems create this counter folded protein.
       | 
       | Maybe a job for Alphafold?
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-03 23:01 UTC)