In 1982, Stanley Prusiner at the University of California, San Francisco isolated the infectious agent behind spongiform encephalopathies and showed it was neither a bacterium nor a virus. He demonstrated it was simply a misfolded protein with no genetic material, capable of causing disease on its own.
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Prusiner coined the term prion for this new class of infectious agent.
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Mad cow disease is cited as an example of a prion disease.
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Prusiner won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this work.
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1:10:25>> Moving on to 1982, the discovery of pions. >> Yes. Um this was Stanley Prusener at University of California, San Francisco. He isolated an infectious agent behind the spongifform encphilopathies. And he showed that that pathogen is not a bacteria. It's not a virus. It's not even anything that is living. It is simply a misfolded protein with no genetic material. But it's wreaking havoc. Mhm. >> This is huge, right? Because before like for for like so much of humanity, we've been worried about viruses and bacteria
1:11:05and like sometimes um protests or like you know like little single-sellled organisms, the stuff that malaria comes from and now we've got something that's not even living and it's giving us a lot of grief. Yes. Um he coined the term pryion. I think mad cow disease is another um example of pryion disease. He won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Medicine. >> Yeah, that's a big one. >> It's a big one because it's it expands all of the things that we need to be worried about. >> Right. Right. >> There's new enemies we need to be aware of here. >> Uh 1982 discovery of uh ribosomes.