Fact 4: One dodgy protein = one mad cow

We have all heard of mad cow disease or BSE, but I bet you never knew that it isn’t caused by a bacteria or a virus but by one infectious protein or prion. Prions naturally occur in the body in the cellular form, where one of their functions is to help maintain parts of the nervous system. This cellular form however sometimes changes, and becomes “scrapie inducing” (scrapie is basically BSE but in sheep and goats). This dodgy prion is bad news! It acts as a template and goes around converting “good” cellular prions to bad ones! The problems happen because these bad prions cause plaques of fibrous protein to accumulate in the brain – this leads to memory loss, dementia and confusion (= mad cow). So, this is obviously bad news for a cow, but how do we get it? Simple, eat the cow. And how did the cow get it? You guessed it, it to probably ate dodgy beef. And why did the cow eat dodgy beef – because a lot of animal feed used to be made from waste meat products and bone meal because it was cheap (but as it turns out not so cheerful). BSE is not the only prion disease though; kuru is a disease that is similar in nature to BSE, initially seen in 1957 in the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. The difference is this was transmitted by their canabalistic funeral rituals. So, if you ever needed a good reason not to eat your mates – there you have it!