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Published by
Australian Academy
of Science
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Activity 4 | Prions – morphing agents of disease
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What are the characteristics of a disease-causing agent?
Up until the 1980s biologists thought that infectious diseases
were spread by organisms such as protozoa, fungi, bacteria and
viruses, all of which are damaged by radiation.
- Explain why the first suggestion of an infective agent that consisted
only of protein was regarded as amazing.
- What are the questions that scientists considering this suggestion would
have asked?
Teachers notes
- Dogma in the mid-1980s still held that agents of transmissible
disease required genetic material composed of nucleic acid (either
DNA or RNA).
The genetic material of an organism is required to direct synthesis
of the proteins needed for survival and replication of that organism.
The suggestion that an infection could be caused by an agent that
contained no genetic information was indeed amazing.
- Sceptical scientists would have asked:
- How do these infective agents reproduce?
- In what form is the information for their survival and replication stored?
- How does the agent survive treatment by radiation?
- How does the agent transmit disease?
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