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A year after a deadly and highly contagious wildlife disease surfaced in Norway, the country is taking action. Chronic wasting disease (CWD), caused by misfolded proteins called prions, has already ravaged deer and elk in North America, costing rural economies millions in lost revenue from hunting. Its presence in Norway's reindeer and moose—the first cases in Europe—is "a very serious situation for the environment and for our culture and traditions," says Bjørnar Ytrehus, a veterinary researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research in Trondheim.
Last week, Norway's minister of agriculture and food gave the green light for hunters to kill off the entire herd in which three infected individuals were found, about 2000 reindeer, or nearly 6% of the country's wild population. "We have to take action now," says Karen Johanne Baalsrud, director of plant and animal health at the Norwegian Food Safety Authority in Oslo. The deer's habitat will be quarantined for at least 5 years to prevent reinfection. The odds of a successful eradication, experts say, will depend largely on how long CWD has been present in Norway.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @01:40PM (2 children)
Um, the whole problematic opens up more questions than we have answers: Apparently prions have very high virulence, and there are no known mechanisms for self-cure of infected organism, no part of immune system is doing targeted molecule removal, especially if it is a relatively small molecule. But then, due to its nature and spontaneous generation, it certainly cannot be a new problem for evolution. How life have solved this problem over billions of years of its existence? Do we know of any past large-scale extinction event caused by a prion capable of affecting large sets of species? We know that molecular paths and biochemical mechanisms are very similar in all mammals, and even in all vertebrates. Prionic diseases have to be naturally checked by something, or else we wouldn't be having this discussion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @06:35PM
or else we wouldn't be having this discussion
Selective pressure is only as strong as it is able to prevent reproductive fitness. Prions typically take a long time to progress to disease, which give the host plenty of time to produce offspring.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @07:30PM
Prion basically means a protein/peptide that easily gets into a beta-sheet conformation and stacks together, forming the most energetically favorable structure it is possible for amino-acid chains to form. These are forming all the time in your cells, I guarantee it.