Abstract

Is a cell a complex coacervate with distribution coefficients and adsorption coefficients as prime physical–chemical parameters allowing a low-entropy-driven bioenergetics based on coherence, as first proposed by Schrodinger in 1944? Or does a cell have ordinary water in solution with small solutes such as K+, separated by a membrane containing ion-pumps that must constantly oppose passive leaks? The latter viewpoint is known as membrane-(pump)-theory (MPT) which is still generally accepted in current physiology and cell biology, but is incompatible with many recent observations on intrinsically disordered proteins, membrane-less organelles, the (quantum) coherence of living systems, and with many crucial old observations. It is not yet generally known that MPT was fully falsified by Ling during the 60ties and 70ties and that Ling developed an adsorption and coherence based coacervate model for the living cell, with a whole set of experimentally approved new equations. All basic tenets of his so-called ‘association-induction-hypothesis’ (AIH) are experimentally approved. It is the aim of this review to demonstrate that the AIH is a good guide to interpret many contemporary physiological, physical-chemical and physical data of living cells and sub-cellular systems, particularly those on coherent behaviour, which are incompatible with MPT. It will be shown that we very much need Ling’s new bio-energetics and have to abandon that of MPT.

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