prion

[Mark Mandel]

On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

>
> PRO from "proteinaceous", IN from "infectious". with a bit of letter
> rearrangement (possibly, the OED speculates, on the model of VIRION,
> based on VIRUS).
>

How about
PR from proteinaceous
I from infectious
-on as ending; common enough in physics and chemistry, from the Greek (2nd
decl?) neuter nom. sing.

m a m

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