- #1
Mike H
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I found this site the other day on the topic of water in biology by Nature writer Philip Ball (who's also written a variety of non-fiction, including a well-regarded book about water a couple of years ago) where he highlights recent papers on the issue of water in biological systems about twice a month on the average:
http://waterinbiology.blogspot.com/"
It's made for fascinating reading/skimming thus far, and - as a bonus - Ball's review on water in biological systems is freely available http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/chreay/2008/108/i01/html/cr068037a.html" (at least for the time being). The citation is:
Philip J. Ball (2008) "Water as an Active Constituent in Cell Biology." Chemical Reviews. 108(1): 74 -108. DOI: 10.1021/cr068037a
Still working through it myself, but it's a good reminder that even something as ubiquitous as water is still an object of widespread study since we don't know nearly as much as we'd like to think we know.
It reminded me of a discussion I once had with a former coworker (he was moving onto a crystallography lab, I had since moved into a NMR lab) over dinner one night. He asked about whether or not working with solids was really such a great idea (I think he was having an introspective moment about spending the next three years of his life having to grow crystals every five seconds, or at least look like he was doing so). We didn't really come to any sort of definitive conclusion, but given that a number of protein crystal structures show quite a bit of hydration, it's not as if he'd be working with completely dry samples. I of course pointed out that there are such things as solid state NMR, which can take place in a hydrated, non-ordered "solid" (where the notion of solid is more based upon rotational correlation times than in some idea of ordered packing as one might see in a crystal of some sort) and that MRI - which of course involves in vivo studies of nuclei in living cells - has people working with quadrupolar nuclei and getting results. That they're able to get anything out of it shows us that cells aren't some sort of isotropic aqueous solution, as the quadrupolar interaction in liquids are typically reduced to zero, but are still extant in anisotropic media.
Anyway, I thought it might be of interest and any comments/feedback are welcomed.
P.S. - I figured since it was "Water in Biology" I'd put it here instead of the Chemistry forum, but if the moderators see fit to move it, I can't really argue. A lot of the literature in this area does seem to come from chemistry departments...
http://waterinbiology.blogspot.com/"
It's made for fascinating reading/skimming thus far, and - as a bonus - Ball's review on water in biological systems is freely available http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/chreay/2008/108/i01/html/cr068037a.html" (at least for the time being). The citation is:
Philip J. Ball (2008) "Water as an Active Constituent in Cell Biology." Chemical Reviews. 108(1): 74 -108. DOI: 10.1021/cr068037a
Still working through it myself, but it's a good reminder that even something as ubiquitous as water is still an object of widespread study since we don't know nearly as much as we'd like to think we know.
It reminded me of a discussion I once had with a former coworker (he was moving onto a crystallography lab, I had since moved into a NMR lab) over dinner one night. He asked about whether or not working with solids was really such a great idea (I think he was having an introspective moment about spending the next three years of his life having to grow crystals every five seconds, or at least look like he was doing so). We didn't really come to any sort of definitive conclusion, but given that a number of protein crystal structures show quite a bit of hydration, it's not as if he'd be working with completely dry samples. I of course pointed out that there are such things as solid state NMR, which can take place in a hydrated, non-ordered "solid" (where the notion of solid is more based upon rotational correlation times than in some idea of ordered packing as one might see in a crystal of some sort) and that MRI - which of course involves in vivo studies of nuclei in living cells - has people working with quadrupolar nuclei and getting results. That they're able to get anything out of it shows us that cells aren't some sort of isotropic aqueous solution, as the quadrupolar interaction in liquids are typically reduced to zero, but are still extant in anisotropic media.
Anyway, I thought it might be of interest and any comments/feedback are welcomed.
P.S. - I figured since it was "Water in Biology" I'd put it here instead of the Chemistry forum, but if the moderators see fit to move it, I can't really argue. A lot of the literature in this area does seem to come from chemistry departments...
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