In the 1950s, a mysterious disease was killing hundreds of people in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea — but no virus, bacterium, parasite, or other living pathogen could be found. The disease was kuru, and the search for its cause helped uncover one of the strangest mechanisms known in biology: a normal human protein folded into the wrong shape can become infectious, forcing other proteins to adopt the same structure. This episode follows the investigation from the Fore people and Carleton Gajdusek to Stanley Prusiner, the discovery of prions, and the questions that remain about how proteins can transmit biological information without DNA or RNA. Even now, scientists do not have a complete explanation for how different prion strains encode distinct biological behavior purely through protein structure. ─────────────────────────────── IN THIS EPISODE— Kuru and the epidemic among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea— Experiments showing an infectious agent with no detectable genome— Stanley Prusiner and the discovery of the prion— How a protein shape can reproduce itself — and what remains unexplained SOURCESNature, 1967 — Tikvah Alper and colleaguesScience, 1982 — Stanley PrusinerNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1976 — D. Carleton GajdusekNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1997 — Stanley Prusiner ─────────────────────────────── Narration in this episode is AI-assisted. Research, writing, and editorial decisions are human. Reality Is Strange — real phenomena, verified, and stranger than they should be.

The Disease That Broke the Rules of Biology

Get Started

Download the App