Virtual Inspection Methods Practice Test

Prions are infectious proteins that propagate by inducing misfolding of normal cellular prion proteins, not by carrying genetic material. Because they are simply proteins with no genome or metabolism, they are not living organisms and they do not contain nucleic acids. This makes the description of proteinaceous infectious particles with no nucleic acid genome the best fit. In contrast, living bacteria have cellular structure and metabolism, and viruses carry nucleic acids, so those options don’t describe prions. Prions are linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, illustrating their protein-only mode of propagation.