Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Electrochemistry

Passthecream posted this link in comments which is a nice listen to Nick Lane explaining his ideas to a non biochemistry audience. I enjoyed it.


Youtube recalled that I watched it and suggested this similar item


which also has some core concepts in it. This few minutes really caught my eye as it's something I've been think about for a long time. It's a reiteration of his ideas from pages p133 to 140 of Transformer with all of the doodles merged in to two slides


Although he does specify a negatively charged surface in the book, this doesn't get fitted in to the brief overview he presents in the talk. But this negative charge is fundamental to the chemistry being discussed. I've snapshotted the two slides and added in the supply of electrons needed for each step of the reaction, with a different colour for each electron or pair of electrons, all coming from the charged surface.





















Aside. The two red ovals pick out a single, bound, negatively charged oxygen atom. If you're trying to keep the charges balanced it is helpful to realise that they are the same moiety illustrated in two places on different slides. End aside.

This is pure electrochemistry. I picked up a paper years ago which was looking at origin of life reactions driven by an external voltage. You can drive the sort of reactions Nick Lane is describing with a tenth of a 1.5 volt battery's potential. The beauty of vents is that they supply the battery.

A subgroup of industrial chemical engineers is well aware of this phenomenon and they are amazed that electrochemistry for organic carbon based molecular synthesis has never been commercialised. This abstract gives the flavour of their frustration

A Survival Guide for the "Electro-curious"

Understandable.

Peter

31 comments:

Passthecream said...

The e.c. paper is a nice find.

Two of Nick's throwaway comments near the end of the second talk were good, first one the morphological resemblance between a cell and the planet and the second, about declining efficiency/increasing diabetes vs aging.

Not if I can help it but the way my aging process is going has me wondering if skeletal joints are even more crucial to be properly nourished than brain cells.

Also a reminder about the Nick'n'Mick podcast I linked earlier which is a genuinely electrifying discussion as their thoughts and ideas miscegenate.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GBxVvLVzF68&si=PF9sLanV3XRGr3G4

Peter said...

I've been quite hard on my joints over the last 5 years of bouldering, Maybe three significant injuries, right elbow currently being nursed a little. But the recoveries have been good and I can no longer even recall which lateral collateral ligament I tore in one of my knees. I think it's saturated fat and a few ketones looking after my joints. But then I would.......

Peter

Captain Sunset said...

Hi Peter, I'm with you matey. I'm coming up 73, and with a record of 60 odd years of rugby injuries (I stopped playing full-contact aged 55 [finishing with Dubai Exiles RUFC]), and touch-rugby [in York, UK] aged 65). Anyway, I and one other (62 years) do ALL the heavy work ++ on our every-creeping forest-bound GC. Interestingly, we both do our own cooking at home 🥩. I also put my later-years health & endurance down to the last 10 years of LCHF efforts (I've been to the GP 3 x in 20 years - I only got help one time (A&E) with an infected [...sepsis] thumb injury. One of my other probs. was the agony of Brachial Plexus Neuritis. Uggh. Historically, I have also suffered some sort of asthma, but I managed to sort that myself (and keep myself in tip-top condition) with my 4 x daily nasopharyngeal membranes flushing protocol (NaCl, Na2CO3, DMSO and H2O2). Bizarrely this protocol horrifies some! Basically I drink it up my nose and spit it out through my mouth. Simples. I have not had a respiratory infection in the 3-years since my synthetic/chimeric covid infection when, due to an early morning daughter & g'kids emergency, I omitted to do it in my panic. It has been written-up that a good flushing of such-like (simpler) nasal rinses are good for about 8 hours or so. I go through a mug full of my mix over 24 hours. I religiously use the same mix everyday and, about 2/3 times a year the base of my nose looks as though I have dipped it in yogurt! The first time I glanced up and noticed this in the mirror I was shocked to my core!! Today, all about me, folk are going down with 'flu' and Covid. Hey ho.

Passthecream said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Passthecream said...

(Typos, sorry) forget about soy based meat-like products and the entire vegan/carnivore debate, I was just then imagining future foods at this base level made via electrochemistry powered by some form of solar or wind powered electricity and hydrolysis, on silicon substrates perhaps and hoovering up any spare CO2 lying around.

karl said...

My observation - if I eat even a small amount of carbs (low carb/low PUFA diet) - my joints hurt. Why would anyone stop?

,.,.
OT
Perversion of published science:
https://www.science.org/content/article/paper-mills-bribing-editors-scholarly-journals-science-investigation-finds

Not exactly new. I knew of a guy that was paid by the USA gov to publish false physics journal articles - (to mislead the USSR?) They have never been retracted. Crime against humanity.

Passthecream said...

Karl "My observation - if I eat even a small amount of carbs (low carb/low PUFA diet) - my joints hurt. Why would anyone stop?"

Essentially I agree. There are other joint agitators. Ultimately perhaps it is about the balance between eg osteoblasts versus osteoclasts or their joint-wise equivalents. The builders and the destroyers, the remodellers. But it seems to me that there is no easy fix, no way of reversing out of it eg it never used to be a problem if one strayed from the straight and narrow but now it is a problem. I just hope that Michael Levin comes up with a joint renormalisation bioelectric solution to this problem of senescence. Soon.

Peter said...

Hi Captain, I seem to have gotten away without any significant colds this winter so far. I think I had a sniffle the previous Christmas but nothing of any excitement…

Pass, well, currently I cycle any spare CO2 through a cow via grass… That will do for me. But the chemistry is, undoubtedly, interesting.

Karl, gulp!

Pass, we all still age, whatever we do to stay healthy. I am less tolerant of indiscretions in my late sixties than I was in my forties. Better find these things out than not find them out!

Peter

Kajus said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Captain Sunset said...

SARS2 & Gain of Function (GOF): Where and when it all began. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Hotez). A history of mad scientists and hubris...

https://alexwasburne.substack.com/p/the-pathogenic-academic-lobby?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=803495&post_id=141528705&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=tb182&utm_medium=email

Peter said...

Cap'n, ah yes, GOF. Another failure. I can't forget that the 'vid went through Milan in Lomdardy pre political panic and nobody noticed. It was present in Italy in September 2019. The pandemic was essentially a political construct... Hotez is essentially a politician, perhaps a little less honest than even BoJo.

I don't know, given enough funding perhaps they really could develop air borne Ebola. I'm sure they're working on it. But ultimately all they needed was a virus to produce a "positive test" and massive political motivation.

And here we are.

Peter

Peter said...

Oops, my mistake, forgot the "disgraced former prime minister" before BoJo!

P

karl said...

OT - ozempic


As usual for Eade s- I think this is a balanced take:

https://michaeleades.substack.com/p/the-arrow-162

Key quote:
"This is precisely what the studies show—if you read the small print in the supplementary material. A little less than half the weight loss is from lean body mass."


The heart is also muscle.. really don't think it is a good idea.

I think this is going to kill people - will it get pulled from the market? or covered up?

Much better to go on a fatty-meat and water diet. The heart won't suffer.

Peter said...

Ah, but does it matter if $$$$$$$.......?

Peter

cavenewt said...

They're seeing these weight loss drugs as the next Profit Spigot in the Sky. Not very likely they'll admit anything wrong with them. Eades has been warning us about this for a long time.

karl said...

Some good news - some of this is going mainstream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYP5kMj-Kqw

Eric said...

Off topic again:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/15/drug-offers-wonderful-breakthrough-in-treatment-of-asbestos-linked-cancer

After reading the first paragraphs, I thought it was something along Seyfrieds lines of making use of the Warburg effect and suppress glucose supply to the cancer cells. But towards the very end, it is explained that the drug surpresses arganine in the blood, starving the cancer cells which lack the gene to make arganine. So interesting niche treatment but no vindication of Seyfried yet.

Eric said...

Karl, the video was apparently pulled by the uploader. What was it?

Gyan said...

Karl,
Peter has already predicted ( I think two years back?) that ozempic will be pulled from the market.

Eric said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/well/live/ozempic-muscle-loss-exercise.html

“These weight loss drugs, they basically cause the development of frailty in older patients in months instead of years,” said Dr. Mitchell Steiner, the chief executive of Veru, which is conducting the study.

karl said...

It was about the new drug - notice the power of big pharma?

If they outlaw the dialectic - the process of science stops.
,.,.
Re that drug - I heard from family of someone who's MD didn't read the fine print - skipped the ramp up - got hospitalized.

Muscle mass is HIGHLY correlated with all-cause-mortality - how can a drug that reduces muscle mass get approved?

,.,.,

Peer review in action:
https://modernity.news/2024/02/17/leading-scientific-journal-publishes-fake-ai-generated-paper-about-rat-with-giant-penis/

,.,.
I've read a few books about vaccines - I'm not anti vax - but don't think they have done full disclosure of most of the vaccines. (I think the measles vaccine is a good one - and they don't understand why - reduces mortality even outside of measles)

However -- The story - which I think are true - many of the vaccines were introduced in a time of rapidly falling mortality from infection - the true credit belongs to plumbers - but some/much of the credit was co-opted by the vaccine industry. There is a lack of honest placebo testing - using false placebos. We can't know the baseline risks.

There is a credible hypothesis that many of the polio cases were not infections - most likely something in the food supply. It is only recently that we have definitive tests for viral infections. What is clear is the lack of full disclosure and transparency goes back much further than I thought.

The question is - how much of this corruption we see today is due to increased corruption? And how much is due to the fact that the Internet has ruined the ability to control the narrative? I think there is some of both - and it is telling that there is much work being done to come up with a way to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Will they be able to suppress the dialectic?

Gyan said...

Is it true that the innate immune system regards visceral fat as a foreign invader and attacks?
And this is the source of continual state of inflammation leading to all sorts of metabolic disorders upto cancer?
Fundamentally this is due to over-nutrition. This is Dr Eades in 2007.

Gia said...

Peter, very interesting blog. I come by it as part of a desperate search for answers about the relationship between food intake, effort expenditure, and the ever rising number on the scale, in the context of post-thyroidectomy.

Long story hopefully shorter: female, thyroid removed at 49 due to Graves disease, 117 lbs at the time. In the 3 years since, steadily gained 3.5 lbs a year, despite steadfastly maintaining a max 1200 cal daily intake, with carbs below 100g, playing tennis 3-4x a week and doing a weights regimen 2x a week. Not menopausal. Doc has me on body mass appropriate synthetic thyroid hormone replacement (levothyroxine and liothyronine). T3 and T4 read midrange, TSH continues to be suppressed for reasons no one appears to understand.

Re the weight gain, nothing makes sense, certainly not the cals in/cals out theory. It's like my body is determined to pack on weight irrespective of any efforts. I'm starting to wonder whether although the bloodwork shows adequate levels of T4 and T3, maybe at the cellular level these synthetic thyroid hormones are being scoffed at by receptors designed to accept triiodothyronine and thyroxine, not the derivative salts liothyronine and levothyroxine, respectively... Would this maybe somehow explain the awfully high number of patients considered to be in a euthyroid state by their endocrinologist based on bloodwork, but who continue to complain of being symptomatic (including weight gain despite best efforts)...?

If there's a part of this blog that addresses even incidentally part of this subject (is synthetic thyroid hormone treated identically to native thyroid hormone at the cellular level), I'd really appreciate being directed to it!

Captain Sunset said...

@Karl, My long standing No.1 multi-jabbed rabid Covidian protagonist in my club has gone down with 6 ITA's in the past week. Not sure yet if it's the calamari clots or not as I have no real update. Also, he has just volunteered for the new Altzhiemers drug of which I believe 3 of the participants have just pegged it. The big drugs gravy train has a lot to answer for. Still, they have the dosh to cover it all up. Move along, nothing...

Peter said...

Hi Gia,

I am very aware of the controversies surround thyroid supplementation but have never spent any significant time reading around it. One of my anaesthesia teachers had her thyroid removed early in life and has watched, with a critical and anaesthesia trained eye, the developments in monitoring of thyroid supplementation over the decades. She has given up on being tested. Nowadays she runs her thyroid management on her heart rate. If it’s low she ups her dose, if high she drops it. Zero confidence in TSH etc.

Which is not a lot of help to yourself!

Ultimately, if the TSH value is genuinely correct, then your pituitary cells are happy with thyroid supplements and their induced intracellular signalling. Then it comes down to how you feel re being hypothyroid, ie symptom control, other than weight control.

If you are functionally euthyroid then other issues with weight control come to the fore. Obviously I would ask about linoleic acid (wouldn’t I?), other sources of production of ROS, especially within adipocytes and about other sources of chronic production of systemic inflammatory mediators which might be adipogenic…

Gyan, that was a perfectly good concept in 2007 but I feel things have moved on since then. During obesity there is adipose remodelling with a number of adipocytes dying. If this occurs in a catastrophic manner (it can be induced by lipid droplet expansion to the point of droplet rupture) then as the adipocyte dies it will release linoleic acid in combination with ROS. That will produce every nasty lipid peroxide you care to mention and the innate immune system will go in to overdrive, treating them as a battleground invitation.

This is far less of a feature of sub cut adipocytes as they are less insulin sensitive than visceral adipocytes. They retain less lipid so can cope by off-loading excess through basal lipolysis. The visceral adopicytes are much more insulin sensitive so will accept more lipid at a given level of insulin so are better at getting big enough to rupture their lipid droplets, die and so and provoke the immune system.

The same *does* occur in sub cut adipocytes (don’t have the paper to hand) but these are not the final port of call for persistent FFAs in the blood stream. Visceral adipocytes (and hepatocytes) are.

Peter

Gia said...

Peter, really appreciate the response!

Will definitely look into the linoleic acid angle and ROS. That is my sense, that over and above the endocrinology dogma, there's an explanation that's been ever just out of reach.

Will also continue reading your blog for any potential eureka moment- thanks for all your work and for keeping it so interesting to the layman.

PS- Can't wait to read your posts re the CV19 vaccines. My attention was piqued by two topics related to the pandemic: a) the highly coreographed dances performed by the overwhelmed first responders at the height of the pandemic, and b) the fact that Pfzr.BioNTech was sued by Allele for unauthorized usage of the latter's bioluminescent protein mNeonGreen in the development of the CV19 vaccine. I found both of these facts to be rather curious, so decided to take my chances with natural immunity instead.

Gyan said...

Peter,
Your explanation makes a lot of sense. The idea of immune system treating visceral fat as a foreign body didn't strike me as very likely. After all, the adipocyctes are self.

I am planning to re-engage with low carbs, after being moderate carb for some years. But I am apprehensive about change in fiber intake. Some, esp the author of Fiber Menace make this point that high-carb people, used to getting a lot of fiber, are using this fiber as a crutch to avoid constipation and other related problems. So, if one eliminates fiber suddenly, issues can develop, So, the induction to low-carb needs to be gradual. He ascribes failure of many people to stick to Atkins or other low-carb programs to this problem.

But I haven't found sufficient discussion. I have been hoping that the high saturated fat intake would be adequate for stimulating the required peristaltic dynamics.

cavenewt said...

Gyan re fiber...you might consider a soluble fiber like inulin powder. It's a good prebiotic, and low carb.

Passthecream said...

Or jerusalem artichokes (topinambur) if you can handle the pace.

cavenewt said...

@Pass & Gyan—Jerusalem artichokes are tasty, especially sliced into a salad raw.

Inulin powder is generally made from chicory or sometimes agave, but mine is made from Jerusalem artichoke, according to the manufacturer, and it's organic.

Peter said...

Gyan, this gives all sorts of pointers as to what *all* inflammatory processes might be. How much is the detection of ROS mediated lipid peroxide derivatives signalling injury, requiring a response? CVD is an "inflammatory" disease. Made 100s of times worse by the most effective anti-inflammatory agents we have, corticosteroids... Well duh.

Peter