<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">This is a good 10-minute video about mad cow. You’re right that the prion diseases are another level of badness. I remember being fascinated by the whole idea that protein folding was another level of research above and beyond everything we’d looked at before.<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Like, how many things we’ve missed are just…protein folding issues?<br class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXcLb4oCYfg" class="">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXcLb4oCYfg</a><br class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Deirdre<br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On May 3, 2020, at 22:04, paulz@ieee.org wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class=""><div class="ydpb201b0c4yahoo-style-wrap" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><div class=""></div>
<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false" class="">Mad cow disease is weird in a couple of ways. Many organic molecules twist themselves into a particular geometry. <br class=""></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false" class="">In many cases, it is possible for the exact same molecule to be folded in a different shape. Then it behaves differently.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false" class="">Mad cow disease can happen spontaneously. Some molecule somehow gets itself twisted in the wrong way. Then it touches other molecules and some of them twist around.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false" class="">During the mad cow problems of the late 1990's ranchers had a hard time understanding that their cattle which had never been off the ranch could still be suspect.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false" class="">Bacteria in food can be killed by exposure cooking. Not so mad cow molecules.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false" class="">The wife of a friend started having memory problems. It was diagnosed as <span class="">Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. She was dead in less than a year.</span><br class=""></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false" class=""><br class=""></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false" class=""><span class="">Creutzfeldt–Jakob</span><br class=""></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></div></div></body></html>