Deadly animal prion disease appears in Europe
Prions are a crazy, crazy phenomenon. From wikipedia:<p>&gt; <i>A protein as a standalone infectious agent stands in contrast to all other known infectious agents such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites, all of which contain nucleic acids (DNA, RNA, or both)</i><p>In my layman&#x27;s understanding, they&#x27;re like this bizarre edge case in the way proteins interact. Of all the myriad way a protien can fold, it happens to find one that <i>induces the same malformation</i> when it interacts with another protein. To me, it almost seems like as much of a mathematical&#x2F;geometrical problem as a biological one. In any case, very interesting from the perspective of emergent behavior in complex systems.