Energy Capacity Of Bioobject Metabolism

Metabolism, synonymous of matter transformation, is a total combination of chemical and physical changes occurring in a living organism and ensuring its vital functions as interrelated with the environment. The main specific functions of metabolism are: 1. derivation of energy from the environment as chemical energy of organic substances; 2. conversion of exogenous substances into ?building blocks?, e.g. antecedents of the cell?s micromolecular components; 3. assembly of proteins, nucleic acids, fats and other cell components from those building blocks; 4. synthesis of disintegration of those biomolecules that were necessary to fulfill various specific functions of a particular cell.

 

The difference between the energy capacity of living matter and a heat engine lies in the fact that it uses free but not internal energy. The principle of structural complementarity of a living system (striving to have no byproducts in chemical reactions) makes a class of compounds –adenine nucleotides, and among them, for most living beings, man included, the sole substance adenosine triphosphate the principal working body in life energy cycles. The unique properties of ATP and freedom from entropy as an independent variable for free energy make the energy cycles of metabolism practically fully determinated processes with reference to initial and termital states.

 

Processes of generation of energy and its dissipation do not depend on one another directly, the selfadjusting balance between the energy produced and its dissipation is not possible, at the same time, for comprehensible reasons it is incompatible with life for the dissipation to go beyond energy production.

 

In metabolism excess energy is produced and the surplus is accumulated. The elementary kind of accumulating is origination of a transmembrane potential and the energy of its electric field.

 

The energy capacity of metabolism is of the kind that it is secures electric reserve wherever possible. The consumption of the stored electric energy goes on in two ways: in the first one the electric current flows through ion channels producing heat and starting regulated wave processes; in the second one non-equilibrium processes of chemical compound synthesis are initiated, especially of ATP and neuromediator synthesis.

 

Despite the fact that the energy of external physical stimuli affecting the bioobject is not assimilated directly and does not join metabolism it has an essential effect on ATP synthesis and on some specific functions of metabolism because of a change in the electric status and transfer of molecules into an agitated state in terms of physical processes, and because of the influence on weak atomic-molecular links and conformational changes in macromolecules.

 

The quantity expressions of energy variables of different interacting structures of bioobjects have been determined with enough accuracy – the energy of weak atomic-molecular interactions (van der Waals? forces, ionic, ion-dipole, hydrogen and hydrophobic links) which are constantly recombining in the course of metabolism, is 4 - 400 kj/mol or 0.04 – 4.0 eV; the energy of different conformational changes in macromolecules is 10 – 90 kj or 0.1 – 0.9 eV; the energy of conformational changes with interaction of the mediator with cell membrane receptors is about 25 kj/mol or about 0.2 eV.

 

As for the energy variables of vital functioning systems starting from a cell level, the quantitative values of energy required for normal functioning are still lower – 0.005 – 0.05 kj/mol or 1.06 – 10.5 eV.

 

Thus, in the first place, the energy capacity of bioobject metabolism is related to the electric status of structures with different complexity which plays the leading part in both energy accumulation and its dissipation.