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Life at the Cell and Below-Cell Level: The Hidden History of a Fundamental Revolution in Biology.
By Gilbert N. Ling. New York: Pacific Press, 2001.
Pp. 373. $19.95.
This book outlines the history of scientific efforts to describe the organization and functions of living cells in physicochemical terms. There is not a single path towards more knowledge and understanding of biological materials; rather, two opposing scientific schools have evolved. As the subtitle of the book suggests, a revolutionary hypothesis of cell structure and function has been developed that is almost unknown or hidden to contemporary scientists.
Ling explains the experiments and theoretical modeling that led to the membrane pump theory, nowadays taught in all textbooks as fact and serving as the foundation for much biological and biomedical research. This theory accounts for the four major physiological manifestations of living cells-solute distribution, solute permeability, volume regulation, and electrical potentials-- in terms of a steady-state model with the following features. A cell membrane separates the interior of a living cell from the extracellular solution. The bulk of intracellular water-the main component of the cell-is normal free water in which the main cellular cation, K^sup +^, and many other solutes are freely dissolved. Energy-consuming pumps in the cell membrane (and in membranes of subcellular compartments) regulate the chemical composition of the cell. In particular, the asymmetric distribution of Na^sup +^ and K^sup +^ between the outside (low K^sup +^, high Na^sup +^) and inside (high K^sup +^, low Na^sup +^) of the cell is maintained by the continuous operation of the Na/K ATPase an ion pump in the plasma membrane. "High energy" that is stored in ATP molecules is liberated during their hydrolytic splitting and used to fuel the pumps and to perform physiological work.
Largely forgotten or hidden from this account are the experimental findings and theoretical considerations supporting equilibrium models of cell function. According to the so-called bulk-phase theories, the entire cell substance, or protoplasm, has unusual life-specific colloidal properties. Ling discusses early bulk-phase theories and the reasons for their rejection by the scientific establishment in the middle of the last century, and then describes the development of a new bulk-phase theory, the association-induction hypothesis (AIH). Statistical mechanics provided the broad conceptual framework for this theory....