ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

Protein Conformational Dynamics 137
by others who feel that none of the water in living cells is bulk (Troshin, 1966,
Cope 1976, Negendank and Karreman, 1979). A middle position is assumed by
those who feel that about half of “living” water is bulk and the other half
“ordered” (Hinke, 1970; Clegg, 1976; Clegg, 1979; Horowitz and Paine, 1979).
This group emphasizes the importance of “ordered” water to cellular structure and
function.
Many techniques have been used to study this issue, but the results still
require a great deal of interpretation. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), neutron
diffraction, heat capacity measurement, and diffusion studies are all inconclusive.
Water appears to exist in both ordered and aqueous forms within cells. The
critical issue is the relation between intracellular surfaces and water. Surfaces of
all kinds are known to perturb adjacent water, but within cells it is unknown
precisely how far from the surfaces ordering may extend. We know the surface
area of the microtrabecular lattice and other cytoskeleton components is extensive
(billions of square nanometers per cell) and that about one fifth of cell interiors
consist of these components. Biologist James Clegg (1981) has extensively
reviewed these issues. He concludes that intracellular water exists in three phases.
1) “Bound water” is involved in primary hydration, being within one or two
layers from a biomolecular surface. 2) “Vicinal water” is ordered, but not directly
bound to structures except other water molecules. This altered water is thought to
extend 8 to 9 layers of water molecules from surfaces, a distance of about 3
nanometers. Garlid (1976, 1979) has shown that vicinal water has distinct solvent
properties which differ from bulk water. Thus “borders” exist between water
phases which partition solute molecules. 3) “Bulk water” extends beyond 3
nanometers from cytoskeletal surfaces (Figure 6.4).
Drost-Hansen (1973) described cooperative processes and phase transitions
among vicinal water molecules. Clegg points out the potential implications of
vicinal water on the function of enzymes which had previously been considered
“soluble.” Rather than floating freely in an aqueous soup, a host of intracellular
enzymes appear instead to be bound to the MTL surface within the vicinal water
phase. Significant advantages appear evident to such an arrangement: a sequence
of enzymes which perform a sequence of reactions on a substrate would be much
more efficient if bound on a surface in the appropriate order. Requirements for
diffusion of the substrate, the most time consuming step in enzymatic processes,
would be minimal. Clegg presents extensive examples of associations of
cytoplasmic enzymes which appear to be attached to and regulated by, the MTL.
These vicinal water multi-enzyme complexes may indeed be part of a cytoskeletal
information processing system. Clegg conjectures that dynamic conformational
activities within the cytoskeleton/MTL can selectively excite enzymes to their
active states.
The polymerization of cytoskeletal polymers and other biomolecules appears
to flow upstream against the tide of order proceeding to disorder which is decreed
by the second law of thermodynamics. This apparent second law felony is
explained by the activities of the water molecules involved (Gutfreund, 1972).
Even in bulk aqueous solution, water molecules are somewhat ordered, in that
each water molecule can form up to 4 hydrogen bonds with other water
molecules. Motion of the water molecules (unless frozen) and reversible breaking
and reforming of these hydrogen bonds maintain the far miliar liquid nature of
bulk water. Outer surfaces of biomolecules form more stable hydrogen bonding
with water, “ordering” the water surrounding them. This results in a decrease in
entropy (increased order) and increase in free energy: factors which would
strongly inhibit the solubility of biomolecules if not for the effects of hydrophobic
interactions. Hydrophobic groups (for example amino acids whose side groups are