Приондарды ашқанға арналған Стенли Прузинердің ғылыми еңбегі

American neurologist and biochemist
Stanley Ben Prusiner (born May 28, 1942 Prusiner discovered prions, a class of infectious self reproducing pathogens primarily or solely composed of protein, a scientific theory considered by many as a heretical idea when first proposed. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1994 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997 for research on prion diseases developed by him and his team of experts (David E. Garfin, D. P. Stites, W. J. Hadlow, C. M. Eklund) beginning in the early 1970s.

He was born in Des Moines, Iowa, into a Jewish family to Miriam (Spigel) and Lawrence Prusiner, an architect. He spent his childhood in Des Moines and Cincinnati, Ohio, where he attended Walnut Hills High School, where he was known as "the little genius" for his groundbreaking work on a repellent for Boxelder bugs. Prusiner received a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania and later received his M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

In his 1998 PNAS review article on Prions, Prusiner wrote: "The idea that scrapie prions were composed of an amyloidogenic protein was truly heretical when it was introduced." Encephalopathy was a myterious disease that attacks the brain, and leaves the brains of its victims full of holes. Scientists did not know what pathogen or disease causing organism that produced such pattern. Prusiner and his co workers suggested "One scientific theory, viewed as heretical in that it seems to challenge the role of nucleic acids as the exclusive carriers of genetic information." This theory suggested that this pathogen might be a "deadly variety of a normal protein that has the ability to amplify itself in the brain. The hypothetical protein is called a prion (pronounced PREE on)."