this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Seems like a real risk for the introduction of prion diseases.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hmmmmmmmm I thought prion diseases were (usually) a result of eating brain matter and occasionally the result of eating non brain matter that shared a body with a brain. By this understanding, the risk of prion diseases wouldn't be a factor as only the misfolded proteins of a brain are ones that can be risky.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

A prion is just a misfolded protine that has some adverse behavior that your body can't detect (there's a mechanism that if your body identifies a malformed protine, it will terminate the cell making it). Anyway, prions live in this small region in a Venn diagram whereits can't be detected, but can still replicate and cause harm.

We mostly think of prion diseases (like mad cow) affecting the brain, but I dont think prions are isolated to the brain... Prion deseases happen to involve the brain a lot because a misbehaving protine in your brain will have a lot more apparent effects

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

But you could knock out the prion protein gene in the cell lines you use for meat production. It’s not needed for cell survival as far as I know.