Tracking Water Molecules Could Unlock Secrets 102
ScienceDaily is reporting that several new discoveries about the simple molecule of water have kicked off a surge in research that scientists believe could lead to solving some of the world's most tricky problems from agriculture to cancer. "Understanding how individual water molecules maneuver in a system to form fleeting tetrahedral structures and how changing physical conditions such as temperatures and pressures affect the amount of disorder each imparts on that system may help scientists understand why certain substances, like drugs used in chemotherapy, are soluble in water and why some are not. It could also help understand how this changing network of bonds and ordering of local tetrahedrality between water molecules changes the nature of protein folding and degradation. 'Understanding hydrophobicity, and how different conditions change it, is probably one of the most fundamental components in understanding how proteins fold in water and how different biomolecules remain stable in it,' says Kumar. 'And if we understand this, we will not only have a new way of thinking about physics and biology but also a new way to approach health and disease.'"
The Cancer card... (Score:2, Insightful)
When in search of funding, linking your research to cures for cancer increases your odds of funding approval.
Who vets these articles??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, how did this get on the front page? I suppose it's an interesting article, to theoretical chemists, but that's about it. Here's [pnas.org] the paper from PNAS (heh).
You may notice a few things if you read it. First, it's an MD (molecular dynamics) simulation. Read: classical equations of motion with an empirically-derived force field (just to head off the quantum gibberish). Second, you'll notice that the paper doesn't mention anything about agriculture or cancer (or much in between), but instead seems to focus on topics as vital to our way of life as orientational entropy and the Widom temperature of water. Third, if you read the last few paragraphs (if you can make it that far), you'll see that a referee brought to the authors' attention that the work presented in their paper had essentially already been done about 15 years ago. Fourth, and perhaps most telling, is that this study is published in PNAS. This journal has an interesting quirk in that if you're a member of the Academy, you get to choose who referees your paper. Trust me, I've seen first-hand how some ancient Academy members use this policy to publish some serious garbage in that journal.
Now I'm not saying that Kumar et al's paper is not an important contribution to the field of theoretical water chemistry. I am, however, saying that it's not nearly interesting enough to be on the front page of Slashdot. Not sure why ScienceDaily picked it up either. I keep telling myself that when I have time, I'm going to start a lit review blog in this field so that the general (geeky) public has a little better handle on the stuff going on in physical chemistry that's actually interesting. Well see if it ever happens.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
The idea here is that if you understand the nitty-gritty details of how hydrophilic and hydrophobic interactions work you could improve how we understand protein folding. Protein folding is an area of biochemistry with no really good models, because it's so complicated. I'm not sure these structures will do much to help us understand protein folding, but if they did it would increase biomedical understanding by a huge amount, as well as opening up possibilities in biocatalysis.
In short, even though the structures may not affect our bodies, the underlying principles affect our proteins' shape, which affects EVERYTHING in our bodies. (a mediocre analogy would be that counting doesn't affect our ability to use rockets, but understanding numbers/math makes a huge impact on our ability to make rockets)