Reviews of Physiology Biochemistry and Pharmacology最新文献

Multiple epigenetic modulations occur to chromatin rather than to DNA itself and these influence gene expression or gene silencing profoundly. Both the creation of these post-translational modifications and the mechanisms of their readout are regulated significantly by electrical forces several of which are discussed. They are also influenced by phase separation which itself is driven by electrical forces.

Damage to the cell membrane can be life threatening for single-celled organisms. Several mechanisms of single-cell wound healing occur and aspects of these are regulated by electrical forces.

This covers the roles of electrical forces in space, in creating planets, including the Earth and in creating the conditions on Earth that make life possible.

Rapid tissue repair is also needed in the event of damage to blood vessels. Most of the essential steps that prevent us from bleeding to death involve the functions of Von Willebrand factor (VWF) and many of these are dependent on electrical forces.

Since the first Chapter dealt with the well-known charge-charge interactions familiar to biologists, this concluding Chapter introduces some key electrical forces, probably much less familiar, perhaps even unknown. LLPS (liquid liquid phase separation) which we have seen involved in so much of cell biology depends on multivalent, π-π and cation-π electrical forces. How these arise is dealt with here and may be especially useful as an aide memoir to return to when such issues arise within the bulk of the text.

Electrical forces are widespread in single-celled organisms and underpin sophisticated communication systems. Bacterial biofilm colonies, for example, attract new members electrically. Bacteria also join together end to end and engage in long-distance electron transport along bacterial filaments over centimetres. This transport of electrons across around 10,000 cells separates life-essential redox reactions spatially and keeps "colleagues breathing" in otherwise challenging aquatic sediments.

ATP synthase is a rotary motor enzyme that drives the formation of ATP from ADP and P and uses multiple electrical forces to do this. This chapter outlines the exquisite use of these electrical forces to generate the high energy phosphates on which all our lives depend. Vacuolar ATPases and the ADP/ATP carrier also are explored.

This penultimate chapter is based on a single paper published in Nature in 2022. I have used it specifically as an exemplar, in this case to show that memory improvement in old age may be regulated by a multiplicity of electrical forces. However, I include it because I believe that one could pick almost any other substantial single paper and show that a completely disparate set of biological mechanisms similarly depend crucially on multiple electrical forces.

Nucleic acids are highly charged, and electrical forces are involved heavily in how our DNA is compacted and packaged into such a small space, how chromosomes are formed, and how DNA damage is repaired. In addition, electrical forces are crucial to the formation of non-canonical DNA structures called G-Quadruplexes which play multiple biological roles.

This first chapter covers essentials needed to understand the multiple roles of electrical forces that impinge on biology, over very different distances. Other less familiar electrical forces are also covered in the last chapter.