What kind of mutations cause inherited forms of prion disease? Are there advantages?
Mutations which increase the probability of adopting the prion conformation cause heritable prion diseases. In humans, the genes are passed along not because of selective advantage, but because the disease state is late onset, so an affected individual does not know before it is too late (after children are born). Examples of similar amyloid diseases are Huntingtons disease, Parkinsons and Alzheimers (all late onset). It looks like they may be useful in fungi (see the prion review).
