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The pork industry’s forced cannibalism, explained
(www.vox.com)
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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!