This book challenges the current wisdom of how cells work. It emphasizes the role of cell water and the gel-like nature of the cell, building on these features to explore the mechanisms of communication, transport, contraction, division, and other essential cell functions. Written for the non-expert, the book is profound enough for biologists, chemists, physicists and engineers.--From publisher description.
An award-winning book that challenges the current wisdom of how cells work in a visionary, provocative, and accessible way... reads like a detective story. This highly praised book emphasises the role of cell water and the gel-like nature of the cell, building on these features to explore the mechanisms of communication, transport, contraction, division, and other essential cell functions. Lucidly written for the non-expert, the book is profound enough for biologists, chemists, physicists and engineers to devour.
This book deals with the role of water in cell function. Long recognized to be central to cell function, water’s role has not received the attention lately that it deserves. This book brings the role of water front and central. It presents the most recent work of the leading authorities on the subject, culminating in a series of sometimes astonishing observations. This volume will be of interest to a broad audience.
Phase transitions occur throughout nature. The most familiar example is the one that occurs in water – the abrupt, discontinuous transition from a liquid to a gas or a solid, induced by a subtle environmental change. Practically magical, the ever-so-slight shift of temperature or pressure can induce an astonishing transition from one entity to another entity that bears little resemblance to the first. So "convenient" a feature is seen throughout the domains of physics and chemistry, and one is therefore led to wonder whether it might also be common to biology. Indeed, many of the most fundamental cellular processes are arguably attributable to radical structural shifts triggered by subtle changes that cross a critical threshold. These processes include transport, motion, signaling, division, and other fundamental aspects of cellular function. Largely on the basis of this radical concept, a symposium was organized in Poitiers, France, to bring together people who have additional evidence for the role of phase transitions in biology, and this book is a compendium of some of the more far-reaching of those presentations, as well as several others that seemed to the editors to be compelling. The book should be suitable for anyone interested in the nature of biological function, particularly those who tire of lumbering along well trodden pathways of pursuit, and are eager to hear something fresh. The book is replete with fresh interpretations of familiar phenomena, and should serve as an excellent gateway to deeper understanding.
An award-winning book that topples the widely accepted edifice of understanding on how muscles contract, replacing it with a simpler construct that better fits the evidence. This is a beautifully produced, single-authored text by one of our more thoughtful, if unconventional, authorities on the mechanism of muscular contraction. Clearly and elegantly written, and with a charm and grace not often seen in modern scientific writing.
This book brings together three decades worth of collaborative research to address the question "What sustains life?" In part a scientific response to Schrödinger's work "What is Life?" this text contains elements of memoir, history, and a solid, informative scientific core that will interest the general reader, student, and professional researcher.
A new theory of the living cell, the association-induction hypothesis, has been proposed. This book examines this revolution in cell physiology which has successfully withstood 25 years of world-wide testing. It has already generated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
This book is a unique synthesis of the latest findings in the quantum physics and chemistry of water that will tell you why it is so remarkably fit for life. It offers a novel panoramic perspective of cell biology based on water as "means, medium, and message" of life. This book is a sequel to The Rainbow and The Worm, The Physics of Organisms, which has remained in a class of its own for nearly 20 years since the publication of the first edition. Living Rainbow H2O continues the fascinating journey in the author's quest for the meaning of life, in science and beyond. Like The Rainbow and The Worm, the present book will appeal to readers in the arts and humanities as well as scientists; not least because the author herself is an occasional artist and poet. Great care has been taken to explain terms and concepts for the benefit of the general reader. At the same time, sufficient scientific details are provided in text boxes for the advanced reader and researcher without interrupting the main story.
Physical Biology of the Cell is a textbook for a first course in physical biology or biophysics for undergraduate or graduate students. It maps the huge and complex landscape of cell and molecular biology from the distinct perspective of physical biology. As a key organizing principle, the proximity of topics is based on the physical concepts that
This highly unusual book began as a serious inquiry into Schrödinger's question, “What is life?”, and as a celebration of life itself. It takes the reader on a voyage of discovery through many areas of contemporary physics, from non-equilibrium thermodynamics and quantum optics to liquid crystals and fractals, all necessary for illuminating the problem of life. In the process, the reader is treated to a rare and exquisite view of the organism, gaining novel insights not only into the physics, but also into “the poetry and meaning of being alive.”This much-enlarged third edition includes new findings on the central role of biological water in organizing living processes; it also completes the author's novel theory of the organism and its applications in ecology, physiology and brain science.
