If there was ever an explanation for the adaptive reason for why most organisms are seemingly programmed for death and cultures optimize for quick decomposition (along with instinct for revulsion towards cannibalism), it’s this for me. Death and burial (or cremation) is the long-held barricade quarantining prions.
Any species (or even local ecosystem) that played with extra long life got overrun by prions and got wiped out.
We’ve messed this natural cycle up royally. And though torn, I think we do need to stop playing with prions in the lab. Even if we can figure out the perfect enzyme to properly refold a protein that’s crumped into a prion, there’s gonna be more that escapes that one-off solution. Better to just keep it from spreading.
South Korea might end up paying for its “clever” program of taking food waste and turning it into animal feed.
