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Chapter 9 - The frontier of biological thermodynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Donald T. Haynie
Donald T. Haynie
Affiliation:
Central Michigan University
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Summary

Introduction

Thus far our principal concern has been fairly well established aspects of energy transformation in living organisms, the macromolecules they're made of, and the environments in which living things flourish. There has been a decidedly practical slant to much of the discussion to show how concepts from thermodynamics are useful in today's biochemistry laboratory. In the present chapter, we'll change tack and set sail for waters less well charted. The exploration will aim to locate the material covered thus far in the broader scheme of things, and also to see how the development of topics of considerable current interest must conform somehow, probably, to laws of thermodynamics. Our course might be somewhat off the mark, as the questions we wrestle with here are more speculative than above; often, no right answer is known. But the journey will not be any less worth the effort, as it will help to reveal how lively a subject biological thermodynamics is today and draw attention to a few of the areas where there is still much work to be done. An undercurrent of the discussion is a research program proposed over a century ago by the great British physicist Lord Kelvin: (1824–1907) to explain all phenomena of the world, both natural and manmade, in terms of energy transformations. The absolute temperature scale we have used throughout this book to quantify thermal energy is named in Kelvin's honor.

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Biological Thermodynamics , pp. 326 - 368
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

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