prion

POS

Noun

HYPHEN

pri=on

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WORDNET DICTIONARY

Noun prion has 1 sense

prion(n = noun.object) - (microbiology) an infectious protein particle similar to a virus but lacking nucleic acid; thought to be the agent responsible for scrapie and other degenerative diseases of the nervous system;

CIDE DICTIONARY

prion, n.

any of several types of protein particle lacking nucleic acid, believed to be the cause of certain slow-developing infectious diseases such as scapie in sheep, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and Kuru in humans. [PJC]