This week I am going to focus on a topic that I find
extremely interesting, prion diseases. There is one particular kind of prion
disease that I find fascinating that I am going to focus this complete post on.
First, I am going to explain what exactly a prion disease is. A prion disease,
otherwise known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), is a
disorder that is found in both humans and animals. They have long incubation
periods and cause neuronal loss. A prion itself is an abnormal pathogenic
entity. It causes proteins to fold in an abnormal way which causes these
proteins to not function properly. In a whole this type of disease effects the
nervous system of and organism and causes many different changes within it. It
can lead to problems in mobility, memory, personality, and behavior. Prion
diseases themselves are extremely rare, but they do happen.
When someone does in fact have a prion disease, it is
usually due to the PRNP gene. This means that the disease is familial because
it can run in the family. The PRNP gene itself is what provides the
instructions for the prion protein called PrP. The functions of this protein
mostly have to do with the brain and this explains why it causes neuron loss.
Many people aren’t familiar with this type of disease being passed around
through the family. They are usually more familiar with mad cow disease. This
is when someone eats a cow’s brain that has a prion disease and get it
themselves. But this is not the specific example that I want to focus on. I want
to focus on a type of prion disease called Kuru. A couple of semesters ago, I
learned about this topic and have forever found it fascinating. Therefore, I
did a little more research on it.
Kuru is a prion disease that is mostly found in New Guinea.
This disease isn’t common today but was common in the 1950-1960s. The name Kuru
has two different meanings which are “to shiver” and “to tremble in fear”.
Therefore, it is easy to see that this name was given because it was causing
people to twitch and tremble when they had the disease. This disease is usually
fatal within one year. That was enough back story, now I would like to get to
the part about the disease that I find interesting. The way people come about
getting the disease Kuru. They get this disease through a funeral ritual. During this ritual, the
family and tribe of the dead eat the body of the corpse. They do this because
they believe that this helps free the spirit of their loved ones. Therefore,
when they are eating the corpse someone is going to be eating the brain causing
them to also get the disease if that person had it previously to dying.
I am not going to go
into depth on the ritual but it is fascinating how they go about it. Therefore,
I will just stick with the main point of this post…..don’t eat brains, you are
not a zombie.
I loved this post! Your background information on prions was great, and you also made me very interested as well in Kuru. Of course, your last line just made it that much better. Great job!
ReplyDeleteReally loved seeing your personality come out on this post! I wrote a blog on prion diseases a few weeks ago and during research I saw the mention of KURU. I did not look into because my main focus was on mad cow disease. SO, thank you for educating me on this very interesting part of prion diseases.
ReplyDeleteI thought your post was pretty cool. Ive only heard of prions causing mad cow disease, this is the first time I'm hearing about kuru. It makes me wonder What group of people actually practiced this ritual. I couldn't imagine eating a dead body, let alone the dead body of a loved one.
ReplyDeletePrions are one of those concepts that threw a small monkey wrench in the Central Dogma since they carry genetic information but are proteins so its just one of those bizarre things that are the exception to the rule. There are some other groups of people that practiced cannibalism throughout history so I am curious to see if there were similar pockets of disease within those groups as well.
ReplyDeleteWhen I learned about prions in class, I had only heard of mad cow disease. I had never heard of Kuru, so it was interesting to learn something new. I definitely reading it in your voice and tone and it was great.
ReplyDeleteReally interesting topic! I've always found prions interesting because they're much different from bacteria and viruses but are able to do about as much, if not more, damage than viruses/bacteria. That last bit got me though. Will definitely stay away from eating brains!!!
ReplyDeleteThe life of the scientist who discovered the mechanism of kuru transmission was far more controversial than his scientific findings.
ReplyDeleteI remember learning about these diseases in Genetics. They are very fascinating, especially mad cow disease. They almost seem like naturally constructed deterrents against cannibalism. Very interesting post!
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