Not that simple, is it?

R

RateLimit

Registered Senior Member
Are prions the answer to "curing" AIDS?

This guy has an interesting prelimary idea. Message is a bit old, but maybe someone can help me out- has there been research progress on prions in relation to HIV? What exactly is the relationship? I have basic knowledge of prions, but what exactly is the link between prions and HIV?

From 2001
 
The only real problem I can see with the suggestion is this:

They are planning on using the prions to target the adhesion proteins on the surface (gp120 I guess), and make the receptor a prion. This would prevent infection, but would not kill the virus, which would stay dormant in the host.

The author says that the prions can flip back to the natural conformation from the prion form. So, the virus stays in the host until that happens, and infects anyways. I guess it would be delayed for an undeterminate amount of time, though.

Just some thoughts.
 
The major false premise in this idea is that prions are always self replicating, this is not true by far, in your body now a fair percentage of proteins have miss folded but they do not replicated! To replicated the prionized protein would have to have a shape that can induce conversion of its normal form and the normal form would also need a shape unstable enough to be converted into this self-replicating form. Also the prion of infectious Spongiform Encephalopathy kills by being able to arrogate into long protein crystalline rods that cannot be digested by the normal mechanisms of protein recycling and that rupture the cell membranes killing the neurons. All of these combine criteria are extremely rare as of now it is only known to happen to one class of protein. To attack aids with prions would require all three of those criteria to be effective, a very unlikely event.

The latest and most hopeful idea is to use RNA interference, a similar idea to the protein interference prion concept only far easier to do.
 
WellCooked, according to the link that RateLimit supplied, prions 'replicate' by converting other proteins to their conformation through contact. It doesn't imply that prions replicate as viruses or cells do.
 
Prions only replicate by converting a specific protien into them selves, these proteins must be of similar or exact sequence to the prion and must be of a appropriated shape, the link and writer are inaccurate. I also never said anything about prions replicating the same way as viruses or nomral life forms do.

please read below for further details:
http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/3035/prions.html
 
Wow the more I read about them, the more interesting they get.

But take a look at this...this person obviously truly believe that Prions are 'fake'...considering the fact that they took the time to write a lengthy explanation

I know Google Groups isn't the most credible source to get your information, but I often refer to them because I think there are smart( well, most I assume) people out there and I love reading their thoughts even though some of the ideas are pretty radical, same goes for people on this messageboard, I am amazed by the breadth of knowledge i take up from you people. That said... hehe, this one line from the link above, caught a "hmmmm" in me...


"...it struck me as odd that the Prusiner theory could work
because of the energy considerations in the reactions. How could such asimple and primitive molecule of prions as compared to DNA, how couldthat molecule change another molecule into a like copy of itself. There simply is not enough energy draped on that prion to manage such a job."
 
RateLimit,

It is in fact thermodynamic possible, as the normal from of the protein has more energy (is less stable) then the prionized form, converting to the prion would be exothermic and "spontaneous" ("spontaneous" as in "can happen" or allowed by thermodynamics, just like diamonds turning to graphite is spontaneous.) all the protein needs is a catalyses in this case its own prionized form is the catalyses, the catalyses does not add energy it only reduce the amount of energy need to start the reaction (activation energy) this is allow by thermodynamics as the total amount of energy required never changes only the speed of the reaction changes.

Smart: Yes, but learned: No.
 
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