Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
1
From Kuru to Nucleation, Aggregation,
Polymerization and Crystallization
in Biology and Medicine
D. Carleton Gajdusek * ,†
Nucleation is a word derived from nuclear family and refers to the concept of pro-
genitor, the mother and the father of any family, which has been at the root of human
life for many thousands of years. From it has emerged the concept of a breeding line
of humans. Only in the last few centuries of civilization have physicists borrowed
the word, and later biologists for Schwann's cell theory. Very recently it has passed
to atomic theory, spectroscopy, radioactivity and to atomic bombs, fission and
fusion. In physics any change in the free energy state of matter involves a nucleation
or ordering of atoms into a new pattern as in any change to gas, liquid or solid or in
the packing of atoms in carbon black, graphite, or diamond. Thus the word nucle-
ation is not derived from atomic physics or cell biology. To be so deluded makes it
difficult to understand the simple matter of pattern setting in any change of state.
Keywords: Crystallization; molecular casting; twinning of minerals; nucleation;
amyloidoses; amyloid enhancing factor; nucleant; infectious nucleant; carbon;
diamond; montmorillonite; epitactic.
Molecular Casting
Infectious amyloid nucleants
We have repeated confirmation of resistance of a portion of infectivity
of scrapie to temperatures as high as 600
°
C (Brown et al ., 2000). The
*C.N.R.S. Institut de Neurobiologie Alfred Fessard, Gif-sur-Yvette, France, and Medical
Biology, University of Tromsø, Norway.
1923-2008.
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