When a prion enters a healthy organism, it induces existing, properly folded proteins to convert into the misfolded prion form. In this way, the prion acts as a template to guide the misfolding of more proteins into prion form. In yeast, this refolding is assisted by chaperone proteins such as Hsp104. These refolded prions can then go on to convert more proteins themselves, leading to a chain reaction resulting in large amounts of the prion form.
