Recommendable! This could be a major breakthrough!
"Experimental evidence of long-range attractive forces between cellular proteins has been obtained by researchers in France more than 50 years after the idea was first proposed. The forces are mediated by electromagnetic radiation, and they could explain how molecules find their targets inside the crowded interiors of living cells.
At any given time, around 130,000 pairwise interactions may be occurring between proteins in a living cell. These are mediated by a range of phenomena including van der Waals forces and hydrogen bonding. Biochemical reactions work on a “lock and key” setup, whereby molecules must find and bind to receptors to trigger the processes of life. For this to occur efficiently inside a cell, molecules must find their cognate partners (keys must find the right lock) much more quickly than is possible by simple Brownian motion. However, how this happens so quickly and efficiently is a mystery. ...
Now in a new paper published in Science Advances, the researchers demonstrate that electrodynamic forces can indeed excite phase transitions in biomolecules. They first use a refined version of their nanowire-based technique to study both the labelled BSA and a second, algal protein that naturally absorbs light. This time, instead of looking simply for collective oscillations in the proteins, the researchers looked at how these oscillations changed when they varied the laser power.
They found that, on increasing the laser power, the frequency of the oscillations shifted, showing that the interaction between the proteins was becoming stronger, as predicted by theory. When they reduced the power, the process was reversed. Moreover, for the algal protein, they used a new, independent spectroscopic technique to show that at high laser powers, the proteins form large clusters"From the abstract:
"Both classical and quantum electrodynamics predict the existence of dipole-dipole long-range electrodynamic intermolecular forces; however, these have never been hitherto experimentally observed. The discovery of completely new and unanticipated forces acting between biomolecules could have considerable impact on our understanding of the dynamics and functioning of the molecular machines at work in living organisms. Here, using two independent experiments, on the basis of different physical effects detected by fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and terahertz spectroscopy, respectively, we demonstrate experimentally the activation of resonant electrodynamic intermolecular forces. This is an unprecedented experimental proof of principle of a physical phenomenon that, having been observed for biomacromolecules and with long-range action (up to 1000 Å), could be of importance for biology. ..."
Experimental evidence found for long-distance intermolecular forces – Physics World
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