Viriods and Prions

Viroids 

      In 1971, T.O.Diener reported that the  spinde tuber disease of potato causing gnarling and cracking of the tuber, is caused by multiplication of a pathogen much smaller than viruses and present in tuber cells themselves, This pathogen found to be a free short and circular RNA strand of about 300nucleotides. Diener  named it viroid. It was found that viroids are infectious because, after multiplying  in a plant cell, these disperse in the tissue and invade new cells. About a dozen plant diseases have since been shown to be caused by viroids.it is also possible that the causative agents of some more plant and animals diseases turn out to be viroides.

Prions

While searching for the cause of a mental disease kuru widespread in a tribe of New Guinea, D,C Gajdusek(1968) discovered that the disease is caused  by a slow virus infection. He shared the 1976 Nobel Prize this work. Later he suspected that other neurological disorders. Like mad cow disease in cows and human dementia and Parkinson disease might also be of this  category, Prisoner (1985) speculated that Creulzfeldt Jacob disease extremely   minute (4-6 nm in diameter ) protein particles which are coded by the genome of certain brain cells, and act as infectious pathogens, These particles have been named prions.