And prions don't have descent with modification. It's a regular mammal brain protein that got accidentally constructed backwards. There's nothing to pass on, nothing to modify.
Err, I think I remember a couple pretty famous articles that contradicts that prions generally don't have descent with modification, which may be what the person above us is referring to:
That's really neat. Still there should be a limited number of possible variants right? Like the energy landscape is fixed and will only admit so many possibilities?
> Prion replication is subject to epimutation and natural selection just as for other forms of replication, and their structure varies slightly between species.[19]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20044542/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17142317/