this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Yep feeding dead cows to cows is the main way that mad cow disease shows up (there is also sometimes atypical mad cow disease where it shows up randomly too)
Well, since MCD is caused by prions, which can occur spontaneously in any healthy animal, it makes sense.
Prions are an amazing thing, the Wikipedia has a whole rabbit hole about them.
They come from naturally occurring protein building blocks, which unlike most proteins, are "flexible", so they can flex into different shapes to join with multiple different proteins.
Well, it turns out sometimes they flex in an unusual way, matching proteins they weren't supposed to, forming a "prion" protein that causes more of the flexible ones join proteins they shouldn't, in a cascading effect.
There is no predicting when this could happen, and no way of preventing it since the flexible building blocks are essential for the normal functioning of many proteins. They just have a certain possibility of catastrophic failure, and that's it.
Yeah, they're really cool!