Home▸Medicine & Biophysics▸Prion Misfolding and Propagation

🧬 Prion Misfolding and Propagation

Explore how a single misfolded prion protein can convert healthy PrP-C molecules into pathogenic PrP-Sc on contact, triggering a self-propagating chain reaction in the brain.

Medicine & Biophysics3DModerate60 FPS

The simulation visualizes how a single seed of misfolded PrP-Sc protein contacts and converts nearby normal PrP-C molecules, generating new templates that spread the misfolded conformation through the tissue in an accelerating chain reaction.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

Adjust the seed concentration and conversion efficiency sliders to see how quickly the misfolding front spreads, and rotate the 3D view to watch individual protein contacts trigger conformational conversion.

💡 Did You Know?

Stanley Prusiner won the 1997 Nobel Prize for proposing that prions could transmit disease using only protein, with no genetic material involved at all, an idea that initially defied one of biology's most basic assumptions.

⚙ Under the hood

Explore how a single misfolded prion protein can convert healthy PrP-C molecules into pathogenic PrP-Sc on contact, triggering a self-propagating chain reaction in the brain.

prionprotein misfoldingneurodegenerationprp-sccreutzfeldt-jakobbiophysicsmolecular biologystructural biology

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install