The surrounding world can be divided into two parts: alive and inanimate. What makes the difference is the subtle reactivity of living systems. The difference is so great that it is reasonable to suppose that what underlies life is a specific physical state, 'the living state'. Living systems are built mainly of nucleic acids and proteins. The former are the guardians of the basic blueprint while the business of life is carried on by proteins. Proteins thus have to share the subtle reactivity of living systems. A closed-shell protein molecule, however, has no electronic mobility, and has but a low chemical reactivity. Its orbitals are occupied by electron pairs which are held firmly. The situation can be changed by taking single electrons out of the system. This unpairs electrons, leaves half-occupied orbitals with positive electron holes, making the molecules into highly reactive paramagnetic free radicals. The reactivity of the system depends on the degree of its electronic desaturation. Electrons can be taken out of protein molecules by 'electron aceptors' in 'cahrge transfer'. When life began, our globe was covered by dense water vapour. There was no light and no free oxygen. Electron acceptors could be made out of trioses by concentrating their carbon atoms as carbonyls at one end of the molecule. The resulting methylglyoxal is a weak acceptor which made a low level of development possible. When light appeared, free oxygen was generated by the energy of photons. Oxygen is a strong electron acceptor. Its appearance opened the way to the present level of development. The transfer of electrons from protein to oxygen is effected by a complex chemical mechanism which involves ascorbic acid.

The living state and cancer.

Complex living structures developed on our globe after the appearance of light and oxygen. In functions of these structures, solid state phenomena play a major role. The structural proteins were made into radicals by doping, the covalent incorporation of electron acceptors. This lent mobility to their electrons and a subtle reactivity to their molecules. Cancer is unable to go into the radical state.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/74/7/2844.full.pdf

The living state and cancer

Influence of methylglyoxal on antioxidant enzymes and oxidative damage.

Methylglyoxal toxicity in mammals

Oxyradicals are generally considered harmful byproducts of oxidative metabolism, causing molecular damage in living systems. They are implicated in various processes such as mutagenesis, aging, and series of pathological events. Although all this may be justified, evidence is accumulating that it is an oversimplified view of the real situation. We can assume nowadays that the living state of cells and organisms implicitly requires the production of oxyradicals. This idea is supported by experimental facts and arguments as follows. (1) Complete inhibition of the oxyradical production by KCN (or by any block of respiration) kills the living organisms much before the energy reserves would be exhausted. (2) Construction of the supramolecular organization of the cells (especially of their membranous compounds) requires the cross-linking effect of oxyradicals, particularly that of OH* radicals. (3) Blast type cells produce much fewer oxyradicals than do differentiated ones, and interventions increasing the production of OH* radicals induce differentiation of various lines of leukemic (HL-60 and K562) and normal (fibroblasts, chondroblasts, etc.) cells, while SOD expression increases greatly. (4) It is reasonable to assume that the continuous flux of OH* radicals is prerequisite to maintenance of constant electron delocalization on the proteins, which is a semiconductive phenomenon suggested in 1941 by Szent-Gyorgyi, but it has never been proven experimentally. It is theoretically possible to describe the function of the synapses as that of a single p-n-p transistor, assuming that the free radical flux maintains electron movements on the subsynaptic structures, while the actual membrane potential is governing the electron flux. This theoretical approach may open completely new possibilities for our understanding of the normal functions of living organisms, such as basic memory mechanisms in brain cells, their aging processes, and therapeutic approaches to many degenerative disorders, such as various types of dementia.

On the True Role of Oxygen Free Radicals in the Living State, Aging, and Degenerative Disorders

Steady-state conductivity measurements and dielectric measurements in the frequency range 10(-5) to 100 Hz are reported for samples of bovine serum albumin, casein, and lysozyme complexed with methylglyoxal. Compared with the untreated proteins, the brown complexed proteins exhibit an increased conductivity and free electron spin density, together with a low-frequency dielectric dispersion. These results can be taken as evidence that the interaction with methylglyoxal results in the proteins possessing an increased electronic activity associated with the creation of mobile electron holes within the valence band states of the protein molecules.

http://www.pnas.org/content/75/1/315.full.pdf

S Bone

Papers

Electronic properties of some protein--methylglyoxal complexes.