From Kuru to Nucleation, Aggregation, Polymerization and Crystallization in Biology and Medicine - Molecules: Nucleation, Aggregation and Crystallization - page 5

Fig. 1. A prepubertal Gimi boy of about ten with kuru who requires aid to remain stand-
ing, He shows the spastic strabismus which most children develop in kuru. He died a few
months later in 1957 (DCG-57 NG-1150).

plasma P-protein, chymotrypsin, ubiquitin, light chains of gamma-globins,
and other amyloidogenic proteins.
Tropocollagen is nucleated to fibrilize not only by submicroscopic
fibrils of tropocollagen but also by dimers and polymers of glycosoamino-
glycans or proteoglycans, and not by heparin which is a single-bonded
dimer (Obrink, 1973).

Synthesis of prion-like infectious nucleants

Katarzyna Johan (Lundmark) and Per Westermark (1998) succeeded in get-
ting in vivo heterologous nucleation of -fibrillary protein polymerization

into amyloid fibrils with synthetic amyloid enhancing factors. Such het-
erologous nucleants are synthetic peptides from the highly fibrilogenic

β