Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
If the value of the number of amino acids has been stable at 20 during most of the
biological evolution, Eq. (
7
) can be rewritten as
p
20
n
½
n
!=
ð Þ!
n
x
¼
ð
8
Þ
Using Eq. (
8
), the maximum number of conformons, p, that can be generated within a
typical enzyme of 150 amino acid residues can be estimated, if the value of x is taken to be
typically 5-10, in agreement with the recent findings of A. Fehrst (1985) that 12 amino acid
residues participate in the active site of tyrosyl t-RNA synthase.
p
¼
20
150
½
150
!=
150
10
ð
Þ!
ð
9
Þ
Eq. (
9
) is satisfied when p
¼
9.02, or 9. Therefore, the maximum information content of
one conformon, from Eq. (
6
), is
I
conformon
¼
p
¼
log
2
20
150
=
9
¼
653
=
9
¼
73 bits
I
p
=
ð
10
Þ
If we assume that the value of x is 5 instead, the same calculation leads to
I
conformon
¼
36 bits
ð
11
Þ
Therefore, we conclude that the information content of one conformon may be in the
range of 40-80 bits.
Equation (
8
) is the same as Eq.
11.19
, the
conformon equation
, which has
allowed us to estimate the maximum information content of a conformon to be
40-80 bits.
The maximum
free energy
content of a conformon can also be estimated. Since
the synthesis of one molecule of ATP in mitochondria is known to require about
16 kcal/mol of free energy and since it takes at least one conformon to couple the
redox reaction of the respiratory chain and the phosphorylation reaction of ADP
catalyzed by ATP synthase, it would follow that the maximum free energy content
of one conformon is 16 kcal/mol (Ji 2000). If the number of steps coupling
respiration and phosphorylation is x, then the average free energy content of one
conformon would be reduced to 16/x kcal/mol. With x
10, the free energy
content of one conformon would be 1.6 kcal/mol. Hence it may be reasonable to
conclude that the free energy content of one conformon ranges between 2 and
16 kcal/mol (see Table 2 in Ji 2000).
¼
11.3.3
Isomorphism Between Blackbody Radiation
and Enzymic Catalysis
At a first glance, there seems to be little connection between
blackbody radiation
(i.e., the study of the relation between the intensity of the light emitted from an object
as a function of wavelength and temperature) and
enzymic catalysis
. The distance
between these two topics is so vast that it is not surprising that more than one
