Whole Cells - Molecular Theory of the Living Cell - page 455

The universal property common to statistical mechanics and information theory
(see Rows 1a and 1b) is suggested to be the quantitative aspect of “information,”
denoted as I qt . Information (I) is thought to have two complementary aspects -
quantitative (I ql ) and qualitative (I qt ). The Shannon equation applies only to I qt and
is blind to I ql . We may represent this idea thus:

I gt ^ I ql I ¼ (12.46)

where the symbol “A B^C” represents the statement that “A is the complemen-

tary union of B and C ” or, equivalently, that “B and C are the complementary
aspects of A” (Sect. 2.3.1 ). In addition, it is suggested here that I may be related to
Firstness of Peirce (see Sect. 6.2.2 ) (hence denoted as 1-I), I qt to Secondness (hence
denoted as 2-I), and I ql to Thirdness (hence denoted as 3-I), although it is not
possible to prove the legitimacy of this assignment.
The universal property spanning the four categories 2a-2d is suggested to be the
quantization of energies (E), including free energies. It should be recalled that free
energies are the functions of both energy (E) and entropy (S) (see Eq. 2.1 ). The process
of quantization may be more general than has been thought in quantum mechanics.
Quantization occurs not only in blackbody radiation (see Row 2a) but also in protein
folding (Row 2b), single-molecule enzymology (Row 2c), and whole-cell RNA
metabolism (Row 2d), as evidenced by the fact that some aspects of these processes
all obey the same mathematical equation, the blackbody radiation-like equation
(BRE) (see the second row and the first column of Table 12.13 ). Not only energy
(or more accurately “action”) but entropy (and hence free energy) may be quantized.
According to Gilson and McPherson (2011), the Boltzmann constant k is quantized
and hence so is entropy (S), since k and S have the same dimensionality as evident
in Eq. 4.23 . The fact that protein stability, single-molecule enzyme activity, and
whole-cell RNA kinetic data fit BRE may be an experimental evidence supporting
the postulate of the quantization of the Gibbs free energy in the living cell .Justasthe
fitting of the blackbody radiation data into the Planck's formula indicated the organi-
zation of the energy levels of electrons within the atom, so perhaps the fitting of the
above biological data into BRE indicates that the Gibbs free energy levels of enzymes
are organized inside the living cell. Again:
Just as the transitions of electrons between the energy levels in atoms are responsible for the
absorption or emission of photons, so the transitions of enzymes between their Gibbs free
energy levels inside the cell may be responsible for the rise and fall of the concentrations of
intracellular biochemicals (including RNA) that determine cell functions. (12.47)
We may refer to Statement 12.47 as the Postulate of the Quantization of the
Gibbs Free Energy of the Living Cell, or more briefly the Cell Free Energy
Quantization Postulate (CFEQP).
In 1991, I postulated that all the molecular machines inside the cell are driven by
conformons (i.e., the conformational strains of biopolymers harboring mechanical
energy at sequence-specific sites) and that the minimum energy content of the
conformon is kT or ~4

¼

10 14 ergs, which is about 10 orders of 10 greater than