From Kuru to Nucleation, Aggregation, Polymerization and Crystallization in Biology and Medicine - Molecules: Nucleation, Aggregation and Crystallization - page 6

section of the amyloid precursor protein or both transthyretin and insulin
associated amyloid. They serve to nucleate the fibrilization of the AA
amyloid precursor protein when polymerized into small fibrils, but not as
unpolymerized peptides. Labeling with I 131 has served to locate AA amyloid
fibrils that have been nucleated by these heterologous amyloid-enhancing
factors. Thus, if these replicating systems are thought of as being alive, they
have already synthesized “life” and published their findings.
Per Westermark and his colleagues have demonstrated the induction of
AA amyloidosis by nucleation with heteronucleants such as silk and spider
webs and by oral paté de fois in transgenic mice (Johan et al ., 1998;
Solomon et al. , 2007).
Biological macromolecules all interact strongly
with SiO 2 ,the most common solid mineral on the
surface of Earth.Montmorillonite clay deposits
cause delayed neurodegenerative diseases
Iler (1977) and Weiss (1981) have shown how silicon and oxygen in the
form of SiO 2 can interact and bond to biological macromolecules or poly-
mers in long series of strong attractions, whether they are carbohydrates,
proteins, nucleic acids or fats. Silicon and oxygen are the two most com-
mon elements on the surface of Earth. The role of silicon is fully discussed
in the Nobel Foundation's The Biochemistry of Silicon and Related
Problems , in which Iler's article appeared. Thus binding to solids is the
most likely origin of life, not a primordial oceanic liquid.
The high incidence foci of two very different diseases, Guamanian amy-
otrophic lateral sclerosis (lytico) and Parkinsonism dementia (bodig) , of the
Chamoro people on Guam, also occurred in the few remote inland villages of
Honshu Island in Japan and among the Auyu and Jakai people around Bade
and Kepi in southern West New Guinea (Gajdusek, Salazar, 1987). It has vir-
tually disappeared from all of these places with the introduction of civilization.
These three foci were restricted to remote communities in which a depletion of
calcium produced a chronic severe deficiency of calcium in the diet, such that
calcium sparing resulted in soft tissue deposition of calcium-aluminum-silicon,