And if that shape gets warped, those proteins “can’t work very well.” That would cause problems because proteins, he notes, are the “universal machinery of life.” And the British team has now shown how TMAO can protect proteins under pressure. “The weight of the water pushes water molecules into proteins and distorts them,” Yancey explains. And that pressure doesn’t just press down. She’s a marine biologist at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Geneseo. There, the pressure is “about the equivalent of an elephant standing on top of your thumb,” says Mackenzie Gerringer. It’s known as the hadal zone (named for the Greek god Hades who ruled the underworld). That’s especially true in the oceans’ deep trenches. For example, it explains how a water strider can skitter across a pond surface without sinking.īut extreme pressure squashes this network of water molecules. That gives water many of its special properties. They form a tetrahedral (pyramid-like) structure. Water molecules normally stick together like little magnets. It used physics to unlock the secret workings of this molecule. “I’m not a physical chemist,” Yancey says, “so I couldn’t analyze the mechanism.” But in the new study, the British team has picked up where his left off. Harrison Laurent et al/Communications Chemistry 2022 ( CC BY) As the depths increased, species living there had increasing amounts of TMAO - shown here as blue centers in the ball-and-stick figures of water molecules. The graph shows representative fish species at three different ocean depths.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |