THE THEORY OF MECHANISM OF DISEASE

ONE THEORY ON THE MECHANISM OF DISEASE

In recent years scientists have focused their attention on a disease that some attribute to an abnormal form of a protein called a PRION. The theory is that disease results when defective prions bind to normal prion proteins, causing the normal protein to misfold. The result is “a chain reaction that propagates the disease and generates new infectious material” says the journal Scientific American.

What may have been an instance of prion-based disease first came to public attention in the 1950’s in Papua New Guinea. Certain isolated tribes engaged in a form of cannibalism for religious reasons, and this led to a disease called KURU, with symptoms similar to those of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Once the afflicted tribes gave up this religious ritual, the incidence of KURU rapidly declined, and it is now virtually unknown.

                                                         AMAZING DESIGN!

Happily, though, proteins are usually folded correctly and go about their tasks with amazing cooperation, efficiency, and fidelity. This is remarkable considering that there are over 100,000 different kinds of proteins in the human body, all complex chains arranged into thousands of types of folds.

The world of proteins is still largely uncharted. To learn more, researchers are now devising sophisticated computer programs that may predict the shape of proteins from their amino acid sequence. Still, even the little we know about proteins establishes clearly that these “chain of life” not only possess a high level of organization but also reflect a profound intelligence.