The Great Protein Rebellion

Imagine being a nerve cell just chilling in the brain when suddenly your proteins start folding wrong like they're having an existential crisis! Prions are basically the zombie apocalypse of the protein world - one misfolded protein shows up and convinces all your normal proteins to join the dark side. The nerve cell's expression is perfect because it's literally watching its own destruction unfold in real-time and can't do anything about it. It's like standing there while your coworkers all decide to quit their jobs and start a cult that's determined to destroy the office!

For the science nerds: Prion diseases like mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are terrifying because these misfolded proteins aren't even alive - they're just proteins with terrible fashion sense that somehow convince other proteins to adopt their bad folding habits. No DNA, no RNA, just structural chaos that spreads like gossip at a high school!