IUBio

The Prion Hypothesis

Sturla Molden stumol at stud.ntnu.no
Wed Jan 20 07:55:28 EST 1999


In bionet.neuroscience shootingstar21 at hotmail.com wrote:
: How sound is the prion hypothesis by Stanley Prusiner and how exactly does a
: normal protein change into a shape that can cause disease and distort other
: normal proteins into the "bad" shape? Also, specifically, what is the
: experimental evidence for the prion hypothesis and what are the new
: developments, if any, in the theory and in finding cures for prion diseases?

In my opinion the prion theory is in violation of the 2nd law of
thermodynamics. According to the theory, prions grows like
salt crystals. The entropy of the crystal is lower than 
the entropy of the ions, but crystal growth is driven by evaporation
of the solvent (water), which provide the entropy increase. 
In the prion case, however, the entropy of the proteins decreases 
spontaneously but this is not accompanied by a parallel 
entropy increase (e.g. from water evaporation). Consequently, 
the theory must be false. That's my opinion.


Sturla Molden




  




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