How does the number of infectious prions increase within a host organism?

• A. By budding from the host cell membrane
• B. By inducing misfolding of normal cellular proteins into the prion form
• C. By binary fission similar to bacteria
• D. By replicating their genetic material using host cell enzymes

Answer: (B)

Verified step by step guidance

1. Understand that prions are infectious proteins, not living organisms, so they do not reproduce by typical biological methods like binary fission or budding.
2. Recall that prions lack nucleic acids, meaning they do not have genetic material to replicate using host cell enzymes.
3. Recognize that prions increase in number by interacting with normal cellular proteins and inducing them to change their shape into the misfolded prion form.
4. This process involves the prion protein acting as a template, causing the normal proteins to adopt the abnormal conformation, which then can convert more normal proteins.
5. Thus, the increase in infectious prions within a host is due to the propagation of misfolded proteins, not by traditional replication or budding mechanisms.