what size and shape are prions?

Question

They are pathogens that cause mad cows disease and scapie

Answer 1

It is very difficult to classify prions in normal classification (ie, plant, animal, yeast, virus... etc) because it is actually a single protein that, by its shape, can polymerize with itself. In a way, it manages to replicate itself without any nucleotide sequence (no DNA or RNA whereas a virus that has RNA or DNA materials in a capsule.

So prions are basically proteins and not big ones. It is impossible to detect as it stays latent inside the cells

Answer 2

Prion Size

Answer 3

Ah prions! Well the wikipedia article on prions is pretty good (but then I'm very biased...).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion

The kind of prions that cause mad cow disease are made up of an abnormally-folded form of a protein, called prion protein, or PrP for short. We know what size and shape PrP is when it's in its non-prion shape (I actually don't know the size offhand, but it has an 'alpha helical' shape - ie made of little helices, which is a common structure for small proteins). But people don't really know as much about the abnormal, prion structure, other than that the protein re-folds to a 'beta-sheet' structure (kind of sheets of zig-zags - see the pics in the wikipedia article). And no-one knows what size prions are - it's not really known whether an infectious prion is made of just one molecule of abnormal PrP or whether you need a big clump of them for it to be infectious.

Answer 4

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Average human cell: The cell sizes may vary depending on the cell type and circumstances. For instance, a human red blood cell is about 5 microns (0.005 mm) in diameter, while some neurons are about 1 m long (from spinal cord to leg). Typically the diameter of a human (animal) cell is between 10 and 100 microns. Viruses : They range in size from 20 to 250 nanometers (one nanometer is one billionth of a meter). The smallest viruses are icosahedrons (20-sided polygons) that measure about 18 to 20 nanometres wide (one-millionth of a millimetre = 1 nanometre). The largest viruses are rod shaped. Some rod-shaped viruses may measure several microns in length, but they are still usually less than 100 nanometres in width. Bacteria : The average bacterium is 1,000 nanometers long. Bacteria are tiny, most ranging from 1 to 10 micrometres (1 micrometre equals 1/25,000 in). Prion : The average prion is 25.6 nm long.(isoforms take up most of the volume and density of prions)

Answer 5

Prions vary in shape and size since they are abnormally formed protiens.
"A prion (pronounced 'pree-on') — short for proteinaceous infectious particle — is a unique type of infectious agent, as it is made only of protein. Prions are abnormally-structured forms of a host protein, which are able to convert normal molecules of the protein into the abnormal structure."

Answer 6

prions are proteins that are not well folded, they have a loose conformation at the final assembling stage. they can also be called amyloid shapes. if you look for articles about collinge you will find the sizes that i can't remember on top of my head (believe it is about 46 KDa)

Answer 7

Nano-sized Hyperthermophilic Archaeon is the newest and smallest living organism found at this time. The most commonly talked about one is Mycoplasma Genitaluim though, which lives in the primate genital and respiratory tracts and is a little larger than the other. But, even smaller are those in the class of semi-living viruses.

Answer 8

First, WHAT are they?

Answer 9

they are the size of oochie jane