ENST: Cells Find Method in Madness

Cells are not overcome
with disorder; they over-
come disorder with function

“Do not be overcome by evil,” Paul urged his readers, “but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). That’s good moral advice; a wise and godly person can use a bad situation into an opportunity to spread righteousness. In the physical realm, we might draw the analogy of jujitsu, where an enemy’s own muscular force gets used against him. Before he knows it, he is in a hammerlock, walking into the police station against his will.

Something like this happens inside cells. Jostled about seemingly at the mercy of chaotic forces, cellular machines perform a kind of jujitsu, turning the chaos into order and function. Recently published scientific findings along this theme were described by the CEH editor in this article at Evolution News.

Embrace the Chaos:
How Cells Harness Disorder for Function
by David Coppedge
Evolution News & Science Today, September 16, 2024

As the paradigm turns, biophysicists discover unexpected ways that proteins manipulate chaotic situations toward functional purposes. Some proteins don’t just put up with chaos; they embrace it. They count on disorderly forces to get their jobs done. In this article, we will look at three classes of discoveries that illustrate how cells harness disorder to their advantage.

Brownian Ratchets

The simplest example of how a cell can steer disorder toward function is the Brownian ratchet. As students getting acquainted with microscopes for the first time, we recall watching tiny cells and particles on a microscope slide jostling about as if caught in a perpetual earthquake. Brownian motion was named for Scottish botanist Robert Brown (1773-1858, pictured [in the source article]) who watched pollen grains vibrating chaotically under a microscope. The motion was later explained by Einstein as rising from collisions between suspended particles and molecules in the surrounding fluid. Due to the vast number of molecules involved, Brownian motion appears random and can only be described as a statistical phenomenon. Absent other forces, the motion has no preferred direction.

A molecular machine, however, can harness the randomness of Brownian motion by allowing free movement by collisions in one direction but blocking them in another by means of a ratchet mechanism. We are familiar with ratchets in everyday tools like socket wrenches and car jacks, Eric Hedin wrote last year, which we force in preferred directions using muscle. What if random winds could make the socket wrench turn? At a nanoscopic scale, a molecular machine could harness the chaotic forces of Brownian motion by locking up against movement in the counterclockwise direction but permitting it in the clockwise direction….

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