Latest Breaking News

The presence of Al in these tangled proteins may simply reflect the chemical properties of these proteins, one of those being that they bond more strongly to Al than other tissues do. Thus accumulation of Al may well be an indicator that these proteins are present, but not at all necessarily a cause -- just as certain types of tissues bind strongly to certain dyes, facilitating their detection by microscopy.


Aluminum is the third most abundant element in the Earth's crust, more common than iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, or magnesium. It is present in all natural water, but usually at very low concentration, unless the pH reaches extreme values -- either high acidity or alkalinity increases the solubility of Al. It seems unlikely that any organism on Earth could have survived the pressures of natural selection if it was vulnerable to traces of something so ubiquitous.