The new era has come to microbiology as we have realized that the unconventional viruses of kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome (GSS), scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) are infectious amyloid proteins and that these transmissible spongiform dementias are brain amyloidoses. This quotation from a Nobel laureate, D. Carleton Gajdusek, illustrates the best the content of this paper. Amyloid is a generic term, which embraces the fibrillary cross-β-sheet quaternary structure of any protein. All amyloids, irrespective of their amino acid sequences, are formed through nucleation/polymerization reactions in which oligomeric structures (small aggregates) composed of a limited number of a given protein moiety (a seed) nucleates other moieties. As a result, the β-pleated secondary structure predominates. Such proteins are called “prionoids” as opposed to “real” prions, which are infectious, or transmissible, in a microbiological sense; they spread between individuals and cause macro-epidemics, such as kuru, BSE and iatrogenic CJD. In this review, prions and prionoids, and their interrelatedness, will be discussed.