Foiling Deadly Prions

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is the most prominent of the handful of diseases, all fatal, that result when prions, proteins of uncertain function that are abundant in the brain, misfold into an infective form that spreads widely. The aberrant proteins convert normal prions to their malevolent shape as they add them, like rungs on a ladder, to growing, ropy aggregates that destroy neurons, effectively chewing holes in the brain.