mad cow disease is like "ice nine" of the brain

[sophiaserpentia]

Apparently, very complex molecules can teach one another how to fold. This appears to be the way mad cow disease/scrapie/Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease spreads within the brain:

"It's intriguing to find that [prion protein], which, when 'misfolded,' subjects people and animals to these ravaging diseases, is so abundant in our brains," notes Jeffrey Macklis, an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. "Why is it kept in the system if it has the ability to wreak so much havoc? It must have an important function."

In proteins, form determines function. The strings of amino acids of which proteins are made can twist in one way and be beneficial to a body, but if they fold in another way they can be disastrous to the same body. When a small amount of PrP misfolds, it influences normal PrPs near it, causing them to assume the same shape, a wrecking ball that breaks the brain from the inside out.

from Mad cow protein found to have a sane side

This seems to lend vague support to the notion of morphogenetic fields, the proposition that the persistent patterns of nature are not 'guided by laws' but are rather habits that are learned by bits of matter locally and which propagate throughout the universe, increasing in likelihood of repetition the more prominent they become.

Edit. For those who did not catch the reference in the title of this post, "ice-nine" is a hypothetical substance in Kurt Vonnegut's book Cat's Cradle: a form of ice that melts at 114º F, one particle of which would "teach" all of the water it connects with how to take on solid form. In Vonnegut's book, it was created by the US Marines with the intent of reducing the difficulty of operating in wetlands, such as they faced in Vietnam.

Comments

[zensandy.livejournal.com]

I had a law professor who was a Vonnegut fan. He quoted something from Harrison Bergeron once, and I finished the quote for him. He said he'd been waiting 20 years to have a student who read Vonnegut. Then we sidetracked the class with a 10 minute chat about Cat's Cradle, while the other students scratched their heads. *lol*

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

I've read very little of Vonnegut's writing, but I did read Ice 9 - it totally creeped me out.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

That's a good point, and i agree that caution is warranted. It's just a correlation that occurred to me when i read the article. I am unclear on why the presence of a mis-folded protein would encourage other proteins to mis-fold.

From what i've read of Sheldrake's writing, i did not get the impression that his theory is independent of the laws of physics, but rather that he questions the idea of "laws" as abstract entities somehow separate from matter, able to affect matter while not being affected themselves. He is an anti-dualist. From my interpretation of his writings, the existence somewhere in the universe of a mis-folded protein could indeed cause it to happen spontaneously somewhere else, especially the more it happened; but i don't see proximity as a factor being contradictory to his ideas.

[nationelectric.livejournal.com]

From what i've read of Sheldrake's writing, i did not get the impression that his theory is independent of the laws of physics, but rather that he questions the idea of "laws" as abstract entities somehow separate from matter, able to affect matter while not being affected themselves. He is an anti-dualist. From my interpretation of his writings, the existence somewhere in the universe of a mis-folded protein could indeed cause it to happen spontaneously somewhere else, especially the more it happened; but i don't see proximity as a factor being contradictory to his ideas.

This may sound stupid or overly literal, but wouldn't "the persistent patterns of nature are ... habits that are learned by bits of matter locally and which propagate throughout the universe, increasing in likelihood of repetition the more prominent they become" in itself constitute a law that affects matter while not being affected itself?

It seems to me that laws are just the artifacts of filters that we place on reality. We define the problem domain very tightly, define the methodology very tightly, define the acceptable answers very tightly, and when we do all that in a very consistent manner, surprise surprise, everything tends to seem very consistent. We're just playing out tautologies. Which isn't to say that they aren't useful or instructive, but then, so is spoken language.

[sofiaviolet]

Ooh, we read Cat's Cradle in my Lit class this year.

[chimpstop.livejournal.com]

If stuff like this interests you, I highly recommend the bit of brain candy I just finished recently...Greg Bear's DARWIN'S RADIO. He's been somewhat fascinated by all that junk in our DNA that doesn't seem to do anything, but has terabytes worth of storage space. Unlike when he wrote BLOOD MUSIC two decades ago actual genetic researchers and workers had him visit their labs and give him serious info.
It's a fun read, but he's somewhat oblivious to other uses of gender than reproduction...