From Kuru to Nucleation, Aggregation, Polymerization and Crystallization in Biology and Medicine - Molecules: Nucleation, Aggregation and Crystallization - page 4

other examples of this particular “strain” of twinned quartz in mining
shafts for many hundreds of kilometers around the first finding, yet
nowhere else on Earth. Much the same is true for diamonds, emeralds and
rubies, and for other examples of twinning in mineralogy.

Industrial viruses and “ice nine”

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr wrote of “ice nine” in his topic Cat's Cradle (1963):
a fictional approach to the problem of nucleation based on a sound
understanding of the phenomenon. His brother, William, was a major
meteorologist fully familiar with non-DNA or non-RNA containing
viruses and the World War II ethylene diamine tartrate problem of the
industrial viruses, which nucleated the slow appearance of bubbles of large
crystals of the compound made for optical purposes. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
got the idea right.

Amyloid enhancing factors are scrapie infectious
amyloid nucleants

For some 35 years, I have been aware of the work of amylidologists in their
attempts to accelerate the appearance on AA amyloid deposits in animals
primed with inoculation of AgNO 3 or heterologous casein. Their discovery
of amyloid enhancing factors, which were active in high dilutions and diffi-
cult to purify, remind me of our problems with the infectious agents of
scrapie or kuru. I suggested that amyloid enhancing factors were scrapie-like
agents (Gajdusek, 1977, 1988, 1991, 1994a, 1994b; Niewold et al ., 1987).

Any -pleated polymeric assembly as a two-dimensional

sheet or as a fibril may act as a heteronucleant for
different amyloidogenic proteins

β

Amyloid deposits in man or animals are always found to be contaminated
with other proteins similarly polymerized into fibrils — even copolymer-
ized. These are all the proteoglycans and glycosoaminoglycans as well as