Prion, the protein that takes the bad turn.

We all know that proteins are very important for humans, but you may have never heard of proteins that turn out to be 'bad' ones - the ones that make a person go mad and consequently do inhuman things, and these are called mutated prions.

In 1997, Stanley Prusiner, a professor of neurology and biochemistry, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine when he discovered them. Collectively, prion disorders affect about one in 1,000,000 people a year.

Let's dig deep into prions. Prions are misfolded proteins that have the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein.

While examining the infectious causative agent of certain diseases, scientists found that the culprit behind was a prion with an abnormally-shaped protein known as PrPSc.

This mutated prion has one goal - to turn the unmutated prions...