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sophiaserpentiaApparently, 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:
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 114ยบ 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.
"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 114ยบ 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.
