Developing skeletal muscle: the importance of the physical properties of water.
We are proposing that cellular water becomes organized through its interaction with the various macromolecular (particularly protein) matrices of the cell. And a physical consequence of this interaction results in an orderly exclusion of solutes from the aqueous cytoplasm. This orderly solute exclusion, dependent on physical properties of each solute, along with selective electrostatic adsorption of ions determine the total cellular solute concentration in mature cells. We are proposing further that during early postnatal development the water-macromolecular interaction induces less order and high concentrations of sodium can occur. Finally, our current view of cell water may have been in Albert Szent-Gyorgyi's mind when he stated in 1972 that: "Sixty years of research has taught me to look upon water as part and parcel of the living machinery, if not the hub of life. Water is the most extraordinary substance! Partically all its properties are anomalous, which enabled life to use it as building material for its machinery. Life is water dancing to the tune of solids".
Department of Physiology and Molecular Biophysics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77035.
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Hazlewood
D000818:Animals; D001834:Body Water; D055598:Chemical Phenomena; D002627:Chemistry, Physical; D024510:Muscle Development; D009132:Muscles / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats