We need to find a way to stop those prions from coming together in the first place.

There had to be something working between the prions that drew them together.

So now you've got more prions, and the process speeds up.

But nothing in the contentious field of prion research is simple.

Still, that did not rule out prions as a possibility here.

None of these prions cause disease in their normal form.

They both stared at the prions for a few more long moments.

But at least those researchers got funded to look, which has not been the case in the prion field.

The prion hypothesis has never gone down easily among scientists.

Prion diseases are very rare, and no treatment is available for most of them.

Prions may play an important role in stem cell function.

Animals must have lots of bad prions to get a clear diagnosis.

I can't tell if my meat has prions in it or not.

"We don't know where and how prions move through the body before they show up in the brain," he said.

Then we watch the prions in their blood to see if this pattern, or something similar, occurs.

It was as if the prions had been dipped in dye.

In short, they are turned back into harmless prions once more."

"It says here that this prion seems to cause genetic damage."

But in humans these two diseases look very different, even though both are caused by prions.

Prions are so named because they appear to contain only protein.

These abnormal prions can pass from one species to another, including humans.

He believes that prion disease is caused by a virus.

In some cases, the etiology of prion diseases is known.

However, some general characteristics of prion diseases are listed below.

As we know, these prions are clearly proving to be resistant to heat treatment.

He called the agent a prion, for proteinaceous infectious particles.

The word prion was scientific shorthand for "proteinaceous infectious particle."

These features have suggested that the agent may not contain nucleic acid, which has prompted the name prion (proteinaceous infectious particle).

After a decade of work, he came up with a snappy name for the rogue protein responsible: the "prion", or "proteinaceous infectious particle".

A prion has been defined as "small proteinaceous infectious particles which resist inactivation by procedures that modify nucleic acids".

Dr. Prusiner coined the term "prion," for "proteinaceous infectious particle," in 1981, and he has worked to demonstrate the hypothesis ever since.

Prions, he said in a 1982 article in Science magazine, were "proteinaceous infectious particles which are resistant to inactivation by most procedures that modify nucleic acids."

The public was unlikely to become concerned by talk of "proteinaceous infectious particles," "heterozygosity at the 129th codon," "infec-tivity of corneal epithelium" or "pathogenicity in mink."

The general public might not understand the significance of proteinaceous infectious particles, but they did know what you meant when you talked about grinding up dead cows and feeding them to other cows.

Ever since Dr. Prusiner coined the term prion (pronounced PREE-ahn), for proteinaceous infectious particles, in 1981, and started propounding his hypothesis, he has had a vocal contingent of critics.

Prusiner's hypothesis is that fatal brain maladies such as mad-cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are caused not by viruses, bacteria, fungi, or some other mundane agent but by something startlingly new that he has discovered--mutant, rampaging proteins known as "prions," short for "proteinaceous infectious particles."