Wikipedia

A prion () is an infectious agent that is composed primarily of protein. To date, all such agents that have been discovered propagate by transmitting a Protein folding|mis-folded protein state; as with viruses the protein itself does not Self-replication|self-replicate, rather it induces existing polypeptides in the host organism to take on the rogue form. The mis-folded form of the prion protein has been implicated in a number of diseases in a variety of mammals, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, also known as "mad cow disease") in cattle and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. All known prion diseases affect the...

Original article

Genomics from NCBI

Map from GBIF