Molecular Basis and Thermodynamics of Bioelectrogenesis: 5 (Topics in Molecular Organization and Engineering, 5) - Hardcover

Schoffeniels, E.; Margineanu, D. G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0792309758 ISBN 13: 9780792309758

Publisher: Springer, 1990

Synopsis

Despite the fact that many years have elapsed since the first microcalorimetric measurements of an action potential were made, there is still among the research workers involved in the study of bioelectrogenesis a complete overlooking of the most fundamental principle governing any biological phenomenon at the molecular scale of dimension. This is surprising, the more so that the techniques of molecular biology are applied to characterize the proteins forming the ionic conducting sites in living membranes. For reasons that are still obscure to us the molecular aspects of bioelectrogenesis are completely out of the scope of the dynamic aspects of biochemistry. Even if it is sometimes recognized that an action potential is a free energy-consuming, entropy-producing process, the next question that should reasonably arise is never taken into consideration. There is indeed a complete evasion of the problem of biochemical energy coupling thus reducing the bioelectrogenesis to only physical interactions of membrane proteins with the electric field: the inbuilt postulate is that no molecular transformations, in the chemical sense, could be involved.

About this title

Synopsis:

Describes the action potential in the self-consistent, quantitative manner typical of physics, and comes to the conclusion that bioelectricity is primarily an epiphenomenon which is caused by and in turn influences the metabolic dynamics of the cell. This approach is applied to an analysis of the brain-mind problem, attempting to bridge the gap bet

About this edition

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0792309758
• ISBN 13: 9780792309758
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192