Why
Vermont Photonics is organizing this conference
The
purpose of this statement is to describe our motivation for
organizing the
Conference on The Physics, Chemistry and Biology of Water.
Vermont Photonics
is operating two, prototype THz (terahertz or far-infrared)
lasers. Of particular interest to Vermont Photonics is the
intriguing idea that biological systems in the living state
(hydrated) may take advantage of the THz resonances that are
supported by proteins and DNA. This conference is intended
to pick up where the 2004 Gordon Research Conference chaired
by Dr. Gerald Pollack left off. (http://www.grc.uri.edu/programs/2004/intwater.htm).
This
2004 Gordon Research Conference was a significant event that
greatly advanced
the idea of the importance of the resonant dynamics of water
and proteins in the living state, and a 2006 Gordon Research
Conference on current developments in the field was being organized,
not by Dr. Pollack, but another interested researcher. Unfortunately,
this proposed 2006 conference was not organized in time to
meet the Gordon Research Conference schedule for 2006 and had
to be cancelled, causing much disappointment to many interested
persons.
In discussions
with Dr. Pollack, it was agreed that Vermont Photonics would
sponsor and provide administration for the 2006 conference
and Dr. Pollack would act as conference chair, recruiting speakers
and setting the agenda.
In the text below,
I have tried to relate the many different threads that form
a web of increasing scientific interest in the role of water
in the living state. There are a couple of links to websites
in the document below, and many links to pdf files which are
on our website.
Michael Mross, Ph.D.
Vermont Photonics
Technologies Corp.
33 Bridge Street
P.O. Box 516
Bellows Falls,
Vermont 05101
Tel 802 460 1790
Fax 802 460 1796
mailto:mmross@vermontphotonics.com
website/Optical
Test: www.vermontphotonics.com
website/Terahertz: www.vermontphotonics.net
Researchers
from many disciplines have become interested in the role
of structured
water in the living state. Many of the basic ideas establishing
this field are described in the monograph, Cells, Gels and
the Engines of Life A
New, Unifying Approach to Cell Function, Gerald H. Pollack, Ebner, Seattle, 2001. 319 pp. ISBN
0-9626895-2-1. [An informative review of the book was published in Science Magazine.]
In this book, Pollack
has drawn heavily on the work of Gilbert Ling to develop a
picture of how water in the cytoplasm is more properly seen
as a dynamic, structured medium that is part of the machinery,
rather than just as a solvent in which the machinery of life
exists. Gilbert Ling has continued to do research in this area
for the past 20 years, even after his espousal of these ideas
in the 1980's caused him to become ostracized from the federally
supported cell biological research community.
We believe that
the ostracism suffered by Ling may be analogous to the experience
of the originators of the tectonic plate theory in geophysics.
Before tectonic plate theory became widely accepted, its proponents
were severely criticized, and even ostracized by supporters
of a now discredited geological orthodoxy.
From
the point of view of physics, Pollack's work is very welcome
as it brings
to the forefront a deeper and more persuasive picture of cellular
structure and dynamics, and thus provides a sounder basis for
further research, than is provided by the "traditional" picture
of the cellular environment which does not take into account
the collective dynamic effects of water molecules.
The implications
of structuring effects in water, in particular when the water
molecules are near enough to charged or polar molecules such
as proteins to experience the electric field of those charged
molecules, are being discussed by researchers all over the
world these days. Here are some examples:
Details of the 2006
conference in Brattleboro can be found at this website: http://www.vermontphotonics.net/water_2006/index.html
One
of the speakers at the Brattleboro conference was Steve Granick,
a material scientist. His paper, Viscosity
of Interfacial Water, discusses the changes in physical properties
of water near charged surfaces.
Another eminent
researcher in this area is Professor Rustum Roy of Penn State.
From a materials science perspective, Prof. Roy and his collaborators
discuss the huge variety of structures that can and do physically
exist in pure water in a recent paper, The
Structure Of Liquid Water; Novel Insights From Materials Research;
Potential Relevance To Homeopathy. As is apparent from
the title, the authors relate their findings to the current
debate about the possible
existence of so-called "homeopathic" water
solutions.
The
fact that water can be structured in different ways near
charged surfaces seems
to be well established. The question of whether the structuring
of water in the presence of biomolecules has any functional
significance is a closely related but separate matter. Pollack
and Ling and many others believe that this structuring is implicated
in function. Dr. Mae-wan Ho's views on this are very interesting. See
her report on new views of the cellular role of water here: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/WITCRL.php Dr
Ho was one of the speakers at the 2006 Brattleboro conference.
Now
let's consider the resonant structure of the biomolecules
themselves. Before
1980, most physicists, if asked, would have opined that biomolecules
in water would not be able to support mechanical oscillations
of their entire structure. Cursory consideration, based on
an incomplete picture of the collective dynamics of water,
of the possible movements of large, structurally complicated
molecules in their natural water environment would lead one
to conclude that vibrational motion of such a system would
not be possible. The conventional physical point of view would
be that such motion would be over-damped. Instead of "ringing" when
perturbed, a protein or a DNA molecule would simply absorb
the perturbing energy and stochastically impart it all back
to the water molecules surrounding it in a time much less than
the period of oscillation. This is to say that the molecule
would be overdamped. It would be like plucking a guitar
string immersed in molasses.
In
the intervening 25 years it has been shown without a doubt
that biomolecules
can support resonant (phonon) vibrations when in water, and
that the frequency range involved is around 1012 Hz. [In
the 1980¹s, this frequency range was called far infrared,
today it is mostly referred to as the terahertz range].
Some of the earliest work done to investigate resonant vibrations
in biomolecules was reported in the seminal paper, Investigation
of far-infrared vibrational modes in polynucleotides,
by J. W. Powell, G. S. Edwards, L. Genzel, F. Kremer, A. Wittlin,
W. Kubasek, and W. Peticolas. Phys.
Rev. A. 35, 3929-3939 (1987). Today Glenn (G.S.) Edwards
is director of the Free Electron Laser Lab at Duke University
and presented an invited talk at the 2006 conference in Brattleboro
entitled, Taking Advantage of Relaxation Processes in Water
near Biological Surfaces,
in which he discussed experimental implications of biological
interfacial water.
For other experimental
verification that biomolecules can vibrate in this frequency
range, see also the 1988 paper by T. Weidlich and S. M. Lindsay, Raman Study of the Low-Frequency Vibrations of Polynucleotides,
and the 2001 paper by Xie, et.al., Excited-State
Lifetimes of Far-Infrared Collective Modes in Proteins.
Turning to the THz
(terahertz) response of interfacial water, we can cite much
evidence that clustered or interfacial water is in fact a very
active medium in this frequency range.
For example, the
work of Mittleman, et. al, shows that clustered water molecules
sequestered in a reverse micelle collectively exhibit resonant
behavior not present in bulk water. See their
paper, Direct Observation
of Terahertz Surface Modes in Nanometer-Sized Liquid Water
Pools.
Other researchers
have recently shown that THz absorption spectroscopy is a useful
tool for probing the changes in water structure induced by
solutes. See, for example, the paper by Martina Havenith (who
gave one of the programmed talks at the 2006 Brattleboro conference), et.
al., Solute-induced retardation
of water dynamics probed directly by terahertz spectroscopy. See also the paper by Lendl, et.al., Terahertz Pulsed Spectroscopy as a New Tool for Measuring
the Structuring Effect of Solutes on Water.
In the paper by
Xu, et. al., Probing the
collective vibrational dynamics of a protein in liquid water
by terahertz absorption spectroscopy,
a THz spectroscopic investigation of the dynamics of proteins
in the structured water environment is discussed.
Looking at proteins
from another point of view, several researchers have surmised
that the enzyme action of a protein depends heavily on the
dynamics of the protein. See, for example, the two reviews, Enzymes:
An integrated view of structure, dynamics and function, and Protein
Motions Promote Catalysis,
for discussions of the role of protein dynamics in enzyme activity.
A
growing body of researchers now agree with Richard Feynman,
who once reportedly
quipped, "Ševerything that living things do can be understood
in terms of the jigglings and wigglings of atoms". Many
researchers are now considering explicitly the role of vibrational
motion of biomolecules in the THz frequency range in connection
with enzymatic activity and the transfers of energy and matter
in the living state.
Hans
Frauenfelder participated in much of the original work at
the Beckmann Institute
at the University of Illinois that promoted the concept of
the energy landscape of protein conformational states. See
his seminal 1991 paper, The
Energy Landscapes and Motions of
Proteins ,
Dr. Frauenfelder speculates that vibrational dynamics might
play a significant role in various protein functions. More
recent work by Frauenfelder, who is now with the Theoretical
Biophysics Group at Los Alamos National Lab, treats biophysical
dynamics with both protein motions and solvent dynamics
taken into account. See: Slaving:
Solvent fluctuations dominate protein dynamics and functions.
Klug, et.al., in
their paper, Doming modes and
dynamics of model heme
compounds,
show how far infrared or THz spectroscopy is used to identify
the vibrational "doming" mode of heme proteins
(hemoglobin, myoglobin), and show how a vibrational transition
of conformational state allows such proteins to capture
and release their cargo of oxygen or CO.
The idea that the
vibrational dynamics of biomolecules play a role in the workings
of the living state is originally credited to the late Herbert
Fröhlich, one of the pioneers of the theory of superconductivity
in solid materials. See his 1975 paper, The
extraordinary dielectric properties of biological materials
and the action of enzymes.
All of the research
threads described above are used by current investigators who
have posited related views of how inclusion of vibrational
dynamics provides a much more profound understanding of the
physics of the living state. Speculations on the role of vibrational motion
in neurobiological systems can be found in the paper by Georgiev
and Glazebrook, Dissipationless
Waves for Information Transfer in Neurobiology Some Implications. The speculative paper by Watterson, ENZYME FUNCTION: RANDOM EVENTS or COHERENT ACTION ? applies
the concept of coherent vibrational dynamics to enzyme function.
In
2004, the federal agencies, DOE, NIH and NSF, held a joint
workshop on opportunities
in THz science. In light of the above, it is worth reading
Section 6.3 (Biology) of the report of this workshop which contains
a summary of the current relevant views of the attendees to
this conference.
In summation, Vermont Photonics organized the 1st and 2nd Annual Conferences on the Physics, Chemistry and Biology of Water in order to gather many of the talented and significant researchers in this new field, and promote the exchange of new ideas on the role of structured water in cellular functions, and specifically to lay the groundwork for research that may lead to an understanding of the connection between protein and DNA vibrational dynamics and the special properties of water adjacent to these biomolecules.
The 3rd Annual Conference on the Physics, Chemistry and Biology of Water is scheduled for October 16-19, 2008, and is now being organized.
Michael Mross, Ph.D.
Vermont Photonics
Technologies Corp.
33 Bridge Street
P.O. Box 516
Bellows Falls,
Vermont 05101
Tel 802 460 1790
Fax 802 460 1796
mailto:mmross@vermontphotonics.com
website/Optical
Test: www.vermontphotonics.com
website/Terahertz: www.vermontphotonics.net
