The Thermodynamic Machinery of Life / by Michal Kurzynski.

Springer eBooks

Biophysics: An Experimental Tool of Biology or the Physics of Animate Matter? -- Statistical Description of Matter -- Thermodynamic State -- Origins and Evolution of Life -- Molecular Biology of the Eukaryotic Cell -- Chemical Reactions -- Enzymatic Catalysis -- Biological Free Energy Transduction -- Lack of Partial Thermodynamic Equilibrium -- Thermodynamic Supplement -- Stochastic Processes -- Structure of Biomolecules -- Dynamics of Biomolecules.

Living organisms are open thermodynamic systems whose functional structure has developed and been kinetically frozen during the historical process of biological evolution. A thermodynamics of both nonequilibrium and complex systems is needed for their description. In this book, the foundations of such a thermodynamics are presented. Biological processes at the cellular level are considered as coupled chemical reactions and transport processes across internal and the cytoplasmic membrane. All these processes are catalyzed by specific enzymes hence the kinetics of enzymatic catalysis and its control are described here in detail. The coupling of several processes through a common enzyme is considered in the context of free energy or signal transduction. Special attention is paid to evidence for a rich stochastic internal dynamics of native proteins and its possible role in the control of enzyme activity and in the action of biological molecular machines.

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