HEALTH AND WELLNESS

ONE THEORY ON THE MECHANISM OF DISEASE In recent years scientists have focused their attention on a disease that some attribute to an abnormal form of a protein called a PRION. The theory is that disease results when defective prions bind to normal prion proteins, causing the normal protein to misfold. The result is “a chain reaction that propagates the disease and generates new infectious material” says the journal Scientific American. What may have been an instance of prion-based disease first came to public attention in the 1950’s in Papua New Guinea. Certain isolated tribes engaged in a form of cannibalism for religious reasons, and this led to a disease called KURU, with symptoms similar to those of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Once the afflicted tribes gave up this religious ritual, the incidence of KURU rapidly declined, and it is now virtually unknown.                                                          AMAZING DESIGN! Happily, though, proteins are usually folded correctly a

                         OUR BODY: A COLLECTION OF MICROSCOPIC CHAINS Have you ever thought of your body as a collection of microscopic chains? Perhaps not. But in reality, “at the level of its smallest relevant components,” says the book The Way Life Works, life employs “THE CHAIN AS ITS ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE.” For that reason, just a small defect in some of these chains can have a MAJOR impact on our health. What are these chains? How do they function? And how do they relate to our health and well-being? Basically, they are chainlike molecules that fall into TWO main categories. The molecules we will consider in this article are the PROTEINS. The others are the molecules that STORE and TRANSMIT genetic information –DNA and RNA. Of course, the two groups are INTIMATELY related. In fact, one key function of DNA and RNA is to produce life’s vast array of PROTEINS.                                                          HOW ARE PROTEINS MADE? 1.        Inside a ce