X-Message-Number: 8938 Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 13:42:30 -0500 From: yvan Bozzonetti <> Subject: Dead cow About dead cow, John de Rivaz point out: In article: <> = >> For most people >> cryonics is still a 'piece of a dead cow' rather than a tunnel to >> an exciting and fascinating future. > >An unfortunate analogy, given that eating dead animals seems to be a highly >dangerous thing for cryonicists to do. > >Will nanotechnology be able to unravel a brain infested with rogue prions? Prions are wrongly folded proteins acting as their own chaperone (folding protein complex). A cure for prion could be a hard chaperone folding back the rogue prion into the good form. It seems some bacterial chaperones are the first source of prion folding, what a chaperone has done, another can do the reverse. We may be five to ten years from such a solution and 100 years or more from cryonics useful nanotech. In fact, using chaperone folding capacity could well be the first step towards a useful nanotech. Seen that way, J. de Rivaz question takes an historical dimension. Yvan Bozzonetti. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8938