ENST: The Electric Cell: More Synergy with Physics Found in Cellular Coding
This article updates yesterday’s post
about “the electric cell” with more
evidences of intelligent design
The Electric Cell
More Synergy with Physics Found in Cellular Coding
by David Coppedge
Evolution News & Science Today, September 6, 2022
New imaging techniques down to the picometer scale are permitting the detection of previously unknown alliances of cellular software with electrostatics and mechanics. Such knowledge was unattainable until biophysicists gained the ability to measure phenomena at the atomic level. What they are finding multiplies the information content embedded in the molecules of life.
Early depictions of molecules in the nucleus showed them drifting around aimlessly. How could molecules do otherwise without membranes to hold them together? Organelles are defined by their lipid membranes. The simplified picture of molecules in lipid cages, like animals in a zoo, raised questions about how enzymes locate their substrates in regions that, at their scale, would be distant. Last December, we reported findings at Caltech that revealed smaller levels of organization at play: nuclear speckles, transcriptional condensates and other “membraneless organelles” coordinated by non-coding RNAs. These erstwhile “junk” parts of the genome turned out to play key roles in architecting the “office layout” of the cellular factory. Some ncRNAs actually recruit the partners needing to associate like managers calling a meeting.
The Electric Cell
New findings reported in PNAS by Toyama et al. are uncovering a role for electrostatics in enzymatic activity. Simultaneously, the discovery may offer insight into the function of so-called “disordered proteins” that never fold into stable structures, and other proteins containing disordered regions that would seem to flail about like loose cables. But there is order in the disorder! How big is this discovery? “Electrostatic interactions play important roles in regulating a plethora of different biochemical processes and in providing stability to biomolecules and their complexes….”
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