Scientists discover that water holds the DNA double helix together.

[Terrywoodenpic]

Yeah, but to the religious-minded this means the previous models are "fake science", as if previous biochemists and geneticists were engaging in deliberate fraud. After all, they may end up altering their conclusions, and in the religious world such a thing is an indicator of a false prophet who claimed to be hearing from the gods but really wasn't (IOW, a fake).

All we're seeing here is the (mis)application of that religious mindset onto science.

That is a problem for religion not science.
Science is always a work in progress, that does not make it fake.

In this case it has alway been known that water was present and that hydrogen bonds were necessary. All that has changed is the knowledge of what part each plays in the structure.
It is to be expected that that is not the last thing that will come to light about the structure of DNA. This work will continue as always. Science is never complete.

 

[wellwisher]

I don't get it. Water has 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

How does this work if it isn't the hydrogen?

Classic pictures of DNA, still in most textbooks, show naked DNA double helix with hydrogen bonding between base pairs. This is over simplified and leads to oversimplified conclusions. There is also a double helix of water woven into the DNA double helix. The water in the double helix of water, is hydrogen bonded to other water, and to the DNA; surface tension, exerting hydrophobic forces, that make the classic hydrogen bonding between the base pairs more efficient, which is key to a good template. Adding the water made the template even better.

When an enzyme complex comes to the DNA, water is also exerting a hydrophobic pressure of the DNA and enzyme causing the enzyme to bead up onto the DNA; stacking. Through similar hydrophobic forces, this also allows the template hydrogen bonding to become more precise.

If you compare the old DNA diagram to the newer diagram of DNA with water, and allow students to see both side by side, they will ask different questions and receive different answers for each diagram. If we leave out the water, as shown in most textbooks, there is some unknown gap between theory and the experimental behavior, that now requires statistical methods to model. If we add the water much of that gap is accounted for. This opens a door to rational models without the pitfalls of casino science.

A problem that has slowed change is connected to statistical modeling, which may become semi-obsolete, but which is used throughout the bio-industry. It appears easier to suppress the new, then evolve away from that old trusty tool. This wall has been there since the 1950's; important water science discoveries.

The water in the DNA also changes the mechanisms for evolution. Science does not yet allow one to think outside the box of the old science, in public. I have been extrapolating for years and science does not wish to upgrade. Most of it is because nobody has been exposed to the new diagrams, from above, so it was assumed to be alternate theory instead of better science.

The classic way was useful and was the proper path to take, originally. The organics are large and could be investigated easier with 1950's tools and then fudged with math models. Water molecules are tiny by comparison. The water side needed advances in technology and methods. What was postulated decades ago is now visible by experiments.

Water is the most studied material in all of science. There are more papers on water that any thing other single topic in science. It has been studied so much because it is the moat anomalous substance in the universe with 41 known anomalies. These anomalies are where water behaves differently that the trends found in most materials. Water is the Swiss army knife of nature. Water expands when it freezes which is onl one by 1-2 other substances.

The easiest way is to think in terms of the co-partnership between water and the organics of life is the simple system of water and oil, or vinegar and olive oil, used for salads. These system have two opposites, who like to separate out from each other; order from chaos. It is not about chance meetings, but two mutual opposites going in different directions, with the majority component of water leading to organic efficiency. Water is the environment for chemical selection at the nanoscale. Water micromanages and has its finger in every pie.

 

[Revoltingest]

Classic pictures of DNA, still in most textbooks, show naked DNA double helix with hydrogen bonding between base pairs. This is over simplified and leads to oversimplified conclusions. There is also a double helix of water woven into the DNA double helix. The water in the double helix of water, is hydrogen bonded to other water, and to the DNA; surface tension, exerting hydrophobic forces, that make the classic hydrogen bonding between the base pairs more efficient, which is key to a good template. Adding the water made the template even better.

When an enzyme complex comes to the DNA, water is also exerting a hydrophobic pressure of the DNA and enzyme causing the enzyme to bead up onto the DNA; stacking. Through similar hydrophobic forces, this also allows the template hydrogen bonding to become more precise.

If you compare the old DNA diagram to the newer diagram of DNA with water, and allow students to see both side by side, they will ask different questions and receive different answers for each diagram. If we leave out the water, as shown in most textbooks, there is some unknown gap between theory and the experimental behavior, that now requires statistical methods to model. If we add the water much of that gap is accounted for. This opens a door to rational models without the pitfalls of casino science.

A problem that has slowed change is connected to statistical modeling, which may become semi-obsolete, but which is used throughout the bio-industry. It appears easier to suppress the new, then evolve away from that old trusty tool. This wall has been there since the 1950's; important water science discoveries.

The water in the DNA also changes the mechanisms for evolution. Science does not yet allow one to think outside the box of the old science, in public. I have been extrapolating for years and science does not wish to upgrade. Most of it is because nobody has been exposed to the new diagrams, from above, so it was assumed to be alternate theory instead of better science.

The classic way was useful and was the proper path to take, originally. The organics are large and could be investigated easier with 1950's tools and then fudged with math models. Water molecules are tiny by comparison. The water side needed advances in technology and methods. What was postulated decades ago is now visible by experiments.

Water is the most studied material in all of science. There are more papers on water that any thing other single topic in science. It has been studied so much because it is the moat anomalous substance in the universe with 41 known anomalies. These anomalies are where water behaves differently that the trends found in most materials. Water is the Swiss army knife of nature. Water expands when it freezes which is onl one by 1-2 other substances.

The easiest way is to think in terms of the co-partnership between water and the organics of life is the simple system of water and oil, or vinegar and olive oil, used for salads. These system have two opposites, who like to separate out from each other; order from chaos. It is not about chance meetings, but two mutual opposites going in different directions, with the majority component of water leading to organic efficiency. Water is the environment for chemical selection at the nanoscale. Water micromanages and has its finger in every pie.

And despite all this criticism of the "fake science"
of DNA, the old model (waterless) still yielded great
scientific advances, eg, CRISPR, better understanding
of diseases.

To paraphrase George Box....
"All theories are wrong, but some are useful."
That's how science works, ie, imperfect understandings
that are wonderfully useful.

 

[wellwisher]

And despite all this criticism of the "fake science"
of DNA, the old model (waterless) still yielded great
scientific advances, eg, CRISPR, better understanding
of diseases.

To paraphrase George Box....
"All theories are wrong, but some are useful."
That's how science works, ie, imperfect understandings
that are wonderfully useful.

I agree with you, but being overly simplified requires statistical assumptions to compensate. The statistical approach turns life into hocus focus based on Lady Luck. Lady Luck is needed to make up for the deficit. This happens when you leave out a key variable. The whims of the gods appear so today coffee is not good for you, but like the weather this can change tomorrow; whimsical. Folk medicine was also useful before we understood chemistry and biochemistry. It did require some degree of faith in the unknown which you try to predict.

Water and Hurricanes.

Here is a little pivot to show the power of water. Hurricane Ian recently did a lot of damage to Florida. The power of Hurricanes is based on the energy within atmospheric water vapor.

The sun evaporate ocean water, along the Tropics, at a high rate due to the angle of the sun and earth. When water goes from liquid to vapor, there is a 1000-fold increase in volume. The result is as the tropical sun evaporates water vapor into the atmosphere, the barometric pressure goes up; high pressure system. This process is endothermic and absorbs lots of energy, due to water having an unusually high heat capacity, heat of vaporization, and the huge volume of water evaporated.

When the reverse happens, and the water vapor in the atmosphere starts to condense into clouds and then into rain and ice, there is a pressure drop in the atmosphere; low pressure system. Hurricanes have a very low pressure in the eye, due to their extreme rate of water condensation; torrential rain. This very low internal pressure; due to condensation; rain, pulls a vacuum in the local atmosphere which is fed by high pressure nearby, where the sun is still evaporating water. Hurricanes have their own water energy while drawing in additional water energy through the vacuum. Hurricanes can get huge with all the water of the hurricane coordinated into a composite system.

Thunderstorms embedded in the hurricane, which can rise very high into the atmosphere, are also driven by water. The more local condensation of water vapor, as warm air rises into the atmosphere, lowers the pressure aloft, which pulls a vertical vacuum, where the warm moist air is starts to become also vacuumed upward. These upper loft condensation vacuums can spawn tornadoes. While the rising warm air is full of positive charge, due to the broken hydrogen bonds of individual water molecules and the hydrogen trying to form hydrogen bonds. This charge lowers potential via lightning; applied voltage and current.

Another important feature connected to entropy. When water evaporates, entropy increases. There is more freedom for each water molecule to create higher complexity in the gas form. The sun helps the second law since the entropy of the universe increases when the sun evaporates water. When the tropical depression starts to condense water, it lowers water entropy and lower the freedom of water; order starts to form. This not only show up as water droplets but also within the overall structure of the hurricane; order forms. The lowering of entropy is against the second law, and the order that is created gives off free energy, which can increase entropy elsewhere. Part of this is reflected in the path of destruction; chaos from wind and water.

The water of life has it own little storms, energy, and ways to lower and increase order.

 

[Revoltingest]

I agree with you but it requires statistical assumptions to compensate. The statistical approach turns life into hocus focus based on Lady Luck. Lady Luck is needed to make up for the deficit of thinking. This happens the you leave out a key variable. A casino math approach is needed to fill in the gaps.

Not thinking is the hallmark of religion. The faithful
simply recite scripture without question. Lulled into
certainty, brains just shut down. Rejection of
probabilistic models is 1 example of heads in sand.

Science differs in that people formulate & test their
theories. Thinking is crucial because theories are
often found to be wrong, & in need of improvement
or replacement. It advances because they're not
held to be inerrant truth.

 

[wellwisher]

Statistics is most common at the quantum level. However, as we scale up to the macro-level, things become less and less random. Order is superimposed onto chaos, as we scale upward away from the quantum level.

Entropy for example is a state variable meaning any given state of matter has a fixed amount of entropy. A glass of water of given volume at 25C and 1 atmosphere, may be statistical at the quantum level of electrons and protons, but all this uncertainty add to a constant a the level of the glass; the entropy is a constant value that does not change. It is weird how all that randomness add to a constant; order.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was based on electrons moving in orbitals. But this does not apply to me or you. There is zero odds you and I will cross paths while sitting and writing in our favorite home places. There is no wave probability function for people, that look the same as used for the electron. The science problem appeared when some started to extrapolate the statistical quantum world, into the macro world of life. Water has a way to push back uncertainty at the nano-scale and beyond; uses state variables.

Water is held together by hydrogen bonding which is the strongest secondary bonding force. Things dissolved in water have to bow down to the bonding strength of the liquid water matrix. This is why all things of life work in only water. All things have to find their sweet spot in the matrix. They cannot out muscle the matrix of water.

As an analogy, say you go to an open floor rock concert that is full of body builders. You are more average in size and strength. You may not be able to muscle yourself to the stage from the entrance . You are more at the mercy of the ebb and flow of the body builders.

You might then seek a pocket of birds of a feather, so you feel less squished; oil and water. The end game is not the same as everyone being more or less equal, where you have more options; uncertainty of choices. In the case of water, its nanoscale needs are very strong and the organics need to find ways to coexist with these needs, giving order and organization to the organic and life.

An organic centric model see all the same at the concert; all are organic. Once you add water, the body builders come in. They take over the concert with the organic others pushed into pockets; cells, organelles. etc.

DNA with and without water are two different animals. With water DNA has made friends with a body builder who can escort him to the stage. DNA is now accepted among the muscle heads due to this association.

 

[wellwisher]

Hydrogen bonding is unique is that it exhibits both polar and covalent bonding characteristics. In polar bonds, the opposite charges between the hydrogen and the shared electrons tries to get as close as possible to minimize charge potential; electrostatic. With covalent bonds bonding the covalent bonding orbitals attempt to position themselves in ways to lower magnetic potential; electron sharing.

The value of this is hydrogen bonds are like binary switches that can switch back and forth between these two bonding states, separated by only a small free energy hill. This allows water to self ionize to create the pH affect. The hydrogen bonding of H2O to another H2O, can cause a hydrogen to go from its covalent bond to oxygen to a polar bond leading to H3O+. The OH bonds of water are very strong and can withstand extreme heat, but they can be broken and reformed via hydrogen bonding at room temperature. The hydrogen bonding helps the organic reactions of life. This is also why protein, RNA and DNA inherited hydrogen bonds from water.

The polar side of the binary switch has higher entropy, higher enthalpy and occupies smaller volume, while the covalent side of the switch has lower entropy, lower enthalpy and occupies more volume. Water can transmit information through its 3-D hydrogen bonding matrix, by flipping these binary switches, with the differences in free energy and volume between the two settings, having muscle.

This type of binary switch is away more sophisticated than semi-conductor switches, which only transmit binary information. Water by changing switch settings can impact the local entropy, enthalpy and volume; pressure. This is useful for informational muscle and catalysis at the nanoscale.

When water is near different organic materials the aqueous hydrogen bonding adjusts to the needs of the local potential. The switches flip to the needs of the material, creating a finger print of the material; information within the adjacent switches. Since the hydrogen bonding of the water matrix is dominate in life, and still seeks to be optimized, there is informational flow to adjust the global water settings. The organics are constantly induced to change; life upkeep and evolution.

 

[Wandering Monk]

Scientists have determined the water and not the hydrogen bonding between base pairs is what holds the DNA double helix together. This totally changes the way we should conceptually approach DNA. It also makes most textbook pictures of the DNA double helix obsolete, since these old picture ignore the water which is critical to the double helix structure. Those old pictures are now fake science. I have been warning this for years.

An overview of this provocative discovery can be read at the India Times at; DNA’s double helix is held together by water - Times of India

The actual published science paper can be found at; https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1909122116

In simple terms, it was widely believed since the discovery of DNA, that the DNA double helix was held together by the hydrogen bonds between the base pairs within the DNA double helix. More recent discoveries showed that the DNA double helix was not the only double helix in DNA. The DNA also contained a double helix of water in the major and minor grooves of the double helix. This is in the article below from 2017, with the earliest clues in reference #3, dating back to 1992.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00229

The more recent team who overcame a dogma of science; earth is not flat, was able to show the base pairs are actually forced to stack onto each other, like coins, due to hydrophobic affects between the bases and the inner water. The affect is similar to mixing some oil into water. The oil will want to bead up to separate from the water and lower the surface tension.

In the case of the DNA, the base pairs are like oil and the inner water causes them to bead up and stack. This causes the beads of oil; stacked base pairs to become dry; pure oil, allowing the hydrogen bonding to become more efficient.. The hydrogen bonding is more of an affect of the hydrophobic action of the water, than the cause of the double helix.

Water has it finger in every pie within life. I hope the powers to be change the DNA pictures in textbooks so students can ask the right questions and not get stuck in misinformation based reasoning. But then again the double helix of water in DNA has been known since 1992 and if you mention it, you can get gang tackled or censored at science sites What is up with that? Why isn't that better known and taught?

Hydrogen and oxygen are the first and third most abundant elements in the universe respectively. It seem inevitable that water/ice would form in many places.

 

[Wandering Monk]

Just when man thought they knew it all!!!!

Who knows? Maybe in time they will realize that God holds all things together?

See, that's the thing about the scientific method: it can changes its mind about things as the evidence becomes available. You probably see this as a weakness. If it didn't change, where would we be today? Still living in caves.

Religious dogma on the other hand does not subject itself to scrutiny and is static.

 

[Kenny]

Religious dogma on the other hand does not subject itself to scrutiny and is static.

Actually... it does get scrutinized, even though the truth doesn't change

EDITTED FOR CLARITY

 

[Wandering Monk]

Actually... it does even thought the truth doesn't

Perhaps I should have phrased it better. Truth statements about the immaterial are not empirically subject to falsification. They can't be disproved.

 

[Kenny]

Perhaps I should have phrased it better. Truth statements about the immaterial are not empirically subject to falsification. They can't be disproved.

let me rephrase what I said...

Religious dogma can and is questioned when it doesn't conform to truth.

 

[Revoltingest]

let me rephrase what I said...

Religious dogma can and is questioned when it doesn't conform to truth.

How do you discern what's true & what's not?
Dogma vs dogma?
Sounds like a WWE (formerly WWF) match, eh.

 

[Wandering Monk]

let me rephrase what I said...

Religious dogma can and is questioned when it doesn't conform to truth.

What kind of truth are you referring to? Truth about spiritual (immaterial) things?

 

[wellwisher]

See, that's the thing about the scientific method: it can changes its mind about things as the evidence becomes available. You probably see this as a weakness. If it didn't change, where would we be today? Still living in caves.

Religious dogma on the other hand does not subject itself to scrutiny and is static.

Science is about hardware, while religious dogma is more about software. The ancient people did not have modern science. What they did have was a human brain and the ability observe; internal and external data connected to human nature. The wisdom of Solomon is still appropriate since human have not changed much internally. The modern shell is fancier.

Our Human nature is the part of the operating system of the human brain connected to our human DNA, which science can now show is conservative to drastic or rapid change. Good observations 2000 years ago of this firmware will be very similar to today, just as human anatomy has not changed in two thousand years.

Science, on the other hand, evolves and changes because technology keeps on changing and improving, allowing us to see more and more detail both smaller and larger. But the base operating system of the human brain stays more or less the same with some periodic updates. If science stopped all tech improvements it too would reach steady state. The DNA does not update, in grand ways, in just a few generations. It takes so long that observations of old are still very close to the state of art.

 

[sayak83]

Scientists have determined the water and not the hydrogen bonding between base pairs is what holds the DNA double helix together. This totally changes the way we should conceptually approach DNA. It also makes most textbook pictures of the DNA double helix obsolete, since these old picture ignore the water which is critical to the double helix structure. Those old pictures are now fake science. I have been warning this for years.

An overview of this provocative discovery can be read at the India Times at; DNA’s double helix is held together by water - Times of India

The actual published science paper can be found at; https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1909122116

In simple terms, it was widely believed since the discovery of DNA, that the DNA double helix was held together by the hydrogen bonds between the base pairs within the DNA double helix. More recent discoveries showed that the DNA double helix was not the only double helix in DNA. The DNA also contained a double helix of water in the major and minor grooves of the double helix. This is in the article below from 2017, with the earliest clues in reference #3, dating back to 1992.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00229

The more recent team who overcame a dogma of science; earth is not flat, was able to show the base pairs are actually forced to stack onto each other, like coins, due to hydrophobic affects between the bases and the inner water. The affect is similar to mixing some oil into water. The oil will want to bead up to separate from the water and lower the surface tension.

In the case of the DNA, the base pairs are like oil and the inner water causes them to bead up and stack. This causes the beads of oil; stacked base pairs to become dry; pure oil, allowing the hydrogen bonding to become more efficient.. The hydrogen bonding is more of an affect of the hydrophobic action of the water, than the cause of the double helix.

Water has it finger in every pie within life. I hope the powers to be change the DNA pictures in textbooks so students can ask the right questions and not get stuck in misinformation based reasoning. But then again the double helix of water in DNA has been known since 1992 and if you mention it, you can get gang tackled or censored at science sites What is up with that? Why isn't that better known and taught?

Firstly...great paper. I actually did not know this work...and it will be very important in my future research. Thanks for the post and the link. I am adding an excellent review paper published last year by the same group in the Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics where the critical role of hydrophobicity in the bond formation, self assembly and dissolution of several categories of biomolecules like DNA etc.
Hydrophobic interactions control the self-assembly of DNA and cellulose | Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics | Cambridge Core
Secondly, I do not actually see any dogma associated with any of this in science. The seminal role of water in all of this has been widely recognized for decades, which is why NASA only looks at water containing planets for possibility of alien life. But how water plays this role is very very complex and it is only in recent 10-15 years that our laboratory and computational tools have become powerful enough for us to investigate and demonstrate the impact of surrounding molecular forces in biophysical and biochemical systems. The interaction of hydrocarbon and water molecules and surfactants in bulk and in interfaces is one of the hottest topics of research in science and engineering fields today particularly in micro-fluidics and nano-fluidics. The growth in knowledge in these subjects have been exponential in the last decade and a half and there will be significant delay in getting any of these included in school level syllabus (though college textbooks in chemistry and biochemistry already has some of it).
There is also a separate debate to be had whether science in school is about teaching the latest scientific findings (that change and become more complex over time) or rather about teaching how to think and investigate a problem in a scientific fashion. I believe that in schools, one should merely teach the core insights of the physical, chemical and biological sciences (eg. concept of forces, mass-energy conservation, periodic table and intermolecular bond theory, cell theory, DNA and genetics etc.) and then go in case studies and hands-on projects on how to actually investigate a problem (any problem) scientifically. The idea that school level science textbooks have to revised everytime a noble prize worthy work is done is wrong headed, I think.

 

[wellwisher]

Water played a role in allowing life to form; abiogenesis. Water by enhancing hydrophobic interactions forces the organics to pool and pocket, thereby increasing the likelihood things will line up. There is also surface tension within the chop of the tides that enhance the likelihood of chemical reactions followed by hydrophobic pooling.

In the 1950's the Millar experiments were run where they tries to simulate early earth conditions using water, methane and ammonia run through an electric arc to similar lightning; water and thunderstorms. They were able to produce nearly all the amino acids as well as tar like substances, The latter suggests fossil fuels were not the original sources of oil and tar like substances. These already appeared way before life and may have been infiltrated later.

But even before the early earth conditions used by Miller, water was setting the stage for life to appear on earth. The earth is assumed to have an iron core. What that means is the core of the earth is a large metallic source of electrons. When water is evaporated by the sun, and moves upward during thunderstorms, positive charge fills the atmosphere. What this does is creates a potential between the atmosphere and core of the earth, with electrons flowing toward the surface. The oceans are slightly alkaline; slightly negative. This potential with the iron core was amplified when photosynthesis appeared, since photosynthesis creates O2 or molecular oxygen which seeks electrons.

Years ago. I did research growing gem quality crystals. One technique was based on using hydrothermal or supercritical water. Water when heated and pressurized above its critical point becomes a very aggressive solvent for minerals, with this solvent power increasing with temperature and pressure. The implication is confined water deep in the crust, will eat its way into the mantle and continue to the core of earth.

Water in its various exotic high temperature and pressure phases appears to define the inner layers of the earth. Experiments have shown that the temperature and pressure conditions of the earths layers; crust, upper mantle, lower mantle, outer core and core, are similar to that different exotic phase changes of water, at these same extreme conditions.

For example water becomes a metal at the conditions of the earth's core with a density of about 5 times that of liquid water. The core is actually an amalgam or iron, metallic water and nickel. This continuity of water is how electrons are conducted from the core to the surface. The water is rusting the iron core giving off energy. It is also moving these electron to the surface; plate tectonics, and into the atmosphere; lighting. The stage for life was set via organic and ionic interactions with water in this dynamic earth environment.

 

[wellwisher]

There is also a separate debate to be had whether science in school is about teaching the latest scientific findings (that change and become more complex over time) or rather about teaching how to think and investigate a problem in a scientific fashion. I believe that in schools, one should merely teach the core insights of the physical, chemical and biological sciences (eg. concept of forces, mass-energy conservation, periodic table and intermolecular bond theory, cell theory, DNA and genetics etc.) and then go in case studies and hands-on projects on how to actually investigate a problem (any problem) scientifically. The idea that school level science textbooks have to revised everytime a noble prize worthy work is done is wrong headed, I think.

The connections between water, hydrogen bonding, organics and life, have been an interest of mine for decades. It started in Organic and Physical Chemistry in College. It seems straight forward enough, but it was amazing how resistant everyone is to this change, even in science forums.

This is the pitfall of selling students half baked science, while not exposing them to next generation science. I can see teaching the classics, first, but it is also useful to at least expose the students to the future. If not, they are not prepared for change, since it was never sold or pondered as possible.

The main problem in modern medicine, due to not having a good water side approach to life, is the over dependence on statistical models. There is a disconnect in their theory and reasoning. Blind testing, for example, means you need to close your eyes and let a math procedure think for you. I can see how the medical industries like this, since you can train scores of employees, with a routine procedure. But when required to think; emergencies, they are less prepared, since they are all used to working blind. This is not useful when there is a time crunch.

I am also concerned that statistics, needed to bridge the gap between baked; water and organics, and half baked; just organics, is also the tool of choice for casinos and politicians. The all have something in common; fortune telling. One is not allowed to count cards in casino; only blind betting. A rational approach like card counting is illegal in oracle based industries.

Covid was where doctors and lawyers; medicine and politics merged. This downgraded the doctors to the political needs of bureaucrats. It was all dependent on the merging of medical and political oracles, instead of opened eyed logic and reasoning.

Science does not have it own money. It is dependent on others to provide funding; government, industry and private donations. Politics and odds of success is part of the formula for distribution of funds. I can see how those in charge of the money would like to stay in control of it. One way is to hobble science with their own limiting oracle approach; no card counting with water.

 

[wellwisher]

One of the pivotal nano-scale water advancements, leading tolife, was connected to regulating sodium and potassium ions in cells. In the human body, this balance is mediated by sodium-potassium ion pumps. Cells will pump and exchange these two ions with potassium ions accumulating inside and sodium ions, accumulating outside. Neurons take this to the limit; connection to consciousness.

Sodium and Potassium ions both have a single positive charge, so charge is not the whole store. Each ion differs in how they impact the hydrogen bonding matrix of water. Sodium ions are considered Kosmotropic. They create more order in water than pure water will create for itself. Potassium ions are Chaotropoic, which means they create more disorder in water then water creates for itself.

Pure water has a set point in terms of its balance of polar and covalent hydrogen bonding; sweet spot. When we add sodium and/or potassium ions we can expand the bandwidth in both directions through higher and lower entropic potential. This allows different organic equilibria that may not be favorable in just pure water.

For example the equilibrium of the water on the outside of the membrane, due to more sodium ions; induces order in the outside water close to the membrane. This is different from that of the inside water where potassium ions will induce less order in the water. We have two distinct equilibrium zones with different properties and functions.

When oil and water mix this create surface tension; more covalent order in the hydrogen bonds. The order created by sodium ions make this zone more favorable to the attraction of organic food. The more distant bulk water, which is less concentrated in sodium ion, will willing give up its reduce molecules, into this special little zone, for transport into the cell. Both become optimized.

The potassium ions inside cells, by making more disorder in water, will loosen up enzymes that are packed by the water into order. This allows for more catalytic action.

Once these ions could be controlled, cells evolved quickly, due to a forced food supply, even under low concentrations, and also looser internal enzymes up for faster chemical reactions. Neurons, which fire and reverse these ions, periodically, push and pull inside and outside the neurons; branches and memory.

An interesting experiment, that was performed, was to remove the membranes of cells to see what would happen. It turned out that potassium ions still preferentially accumulated into the naked cell bodies. What this tells us, is the long term impact of selective potassium ion inside cells, had selected specific protein and enzymes, which are most in harmony with water/potassium balance. When the membrane were removed the equilibrium balance still formed. Potassium was part of the natural selection process of protein within water.

I read recently that modern plants uptake potassium ions preferentially, but do not have the same control over sodium ion as do animal cells. However, ancient plants had more sodium control. It is possible all cells, both plant and animal, once controlled both ions. The plants changed their approach; fresh water. Salt water is not good for most modern land plants.

 

[wellwisher]

This topic was about a published science study that shows how water plays a major role in terms of forming and adding specificity to the hydrogen bonding of the DNA double helix. Has anything in the life sciences changed to accommodate this discovery, since it goes beyond the current organic centric thinking?

Science has its own dogma and is very slow to change even when new discoveries appear than can prove ways of thinking are wrong. Science is not always rational. Why is science always sold as a rational discipline that tests and falsifies, and then when major premises are falsified, it ignores the change instead off making this a hot topic for brain storming?

The answer, in the case of the life science is statistical modeling. Statistical modeling is a type of religion based on black boxes and gambling odds. Faith in this god of black boxes still comes first. We do not need to know about the water. It is scary having to think about the new possibilities when everyone has been told to let a tool think for you, as you sit blind tesyting in a black box. One cannot see well inside a black box, so where do we go from here? It may be better to bury out heads in the sand; another form of black box, and hope change hits us on the head or it goes away if nobody appears to be home.

A real scientist is already pondering and extrapolating the latest breakthroughs in science, while fake science stays in the dark by choice hoping to cast the past into stone. Science does not have it own resources. It is beholden to others who provide support for science. It appears those who give resources to science are not ready to change anything, so the consensus of science goes along, fearful of losing support. It is now like dealing with a political issue instead of the falsification of a theory.

The golden age of science was in the early 20th century. If we factor out the technology gains created by engineers, we are now in the Bronze Age of science; mass production and assembly line science. This explains why so many try to contrast science with religion, instead of compare the golden age to bronze age of science. Physics is still derivative of 1920's physics. The approach of the life sciences is still in 19th century. The tools have gotten better, but the empirical foundation is not evolving.