How do prions work?

Not clear: Prions are duplications of Amino Acid chains that populate the brain and crowd out the normal brain components, causing gradual dementia and motor changes and eventually death. There is no known cure.

Low energy: Amino acid strings can fold in a gazillion ways. Usually the biological config is the lowest energy one. Prions are protein fragments that have a bio function that is perhaps not at the lowest energy. This opens the door to versions of the same string folding "more deeply". As a few such are energetically favorable, they recruit surrounding hio material to the same abnormal config, zombie-like.