Fatal Flaws

How a Misfolded Protein Baffled Scientists and Changed the Way We Look at the Brain

Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Science, Biological Sciences, Biochemistry, Health & Well Being, Medical, Specialties, Internal Medicine, Neurology, Reference, History

• Author: Jay Ingram
• ISBN: 9780300195187
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication: March 19, 2013
• Imprint: Yale University Press
• Language: English

Discovered and identified as the cause of mad cow disease only three decades ago, the prion is a protein molecule that, when misshapen in the brain, becomes fatal. Novel and controversial, prions have provoked a scientific revolution. They challenge the very foundations of biology: A disease-causing entity with no genetic material at all? A molecule capable of infecting, multiplying, and killing? This book recounts the birth of prion science and the imaginative detective work scientists have undertaken as they struggle to find the answers to devastating brain diseases from mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease to Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s, and others.