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Updated: Aug 16, 2026

Investigating the Spreading and Toxicity of Prion-like Proteins Using the Metazoan Model Organism C. elegans
Published on: January 8, 2015
Prion diseases: a typical Kuhnian abnormality in a molecular paradigm
1Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Federico II University, Naples, Italy.
Abstract:
As a new class of pathogens with unusual properties, prions have been implied in several spongiform encephalopathies mainly affecting farm animals (scrapie, mad-cow disease) and humans (kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, fatal familial insomnia) (1). The term prions underlines the feature that the agents would merely consist of a protein (2), perhaps a pathological counterpart of a cellular constituent with poorly defined functions (3-5). In reviewing relevant literature, in order to test the validity of the 'protein-only hypothesis' for coherence and consistency with a molecular paradigm, we have met evident discrepancies, making prion diseases a typical abnormality in a Kuhnian sense. This paper summarizes and analyses the main features of the protein-only model.
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