Monday, May 09, 2016

Pollack's mechanism and photosynthesis


An obvious idea is that Pollack's mechanism is the predecessor of photosynthesis. The question is therefore whether photosynthesis could involve the formation of exclusion zones (EZs) by the analog of Pollack's mechanism leading to charge separation taking place also in photosynthesis. Pollack's mechanism creates in presence of radiation and water bounded by a gel at the boundary of water and gel an EZ, which is a layer negatively charged water with effective stoichiometry H1.5O consisting of layers with hexagonal structure. The TGD inspired proposal is that hydrogen bonded pairs of H2O molecules are formed and that each of them loses one proton as dark proton at magnetic flux tubes outside EZ. The notion of many-sheeted space-time and topological ield quantization are essential elements of the proposal. Same phenomenon could be caused also by irradiation by sun light.

The light dependent step 2H2O → 4H+ +4e- + O2 of photosynthesis pumps protons through thylakoid mebranes (see the illustration). The electrons excited by photons of sunlight are transferred along electron transfer chain and lose energy used to pump protons through the thylakoid membrane and being thus transferred from stroma (outside of the membrane) to grana (inside of the membrane) against electric gradient. ADP transforms to ATP as these protons return to back through ATP synthase. This step is repeated again and again.

Could dark protons created by the analog of Pollack's mechanism be involved with photosynthesis as its fundamental step already present in its primordial variant? In what step the protons are transformed to dark protons by this mechanism?

  1. The model of cell membrane leads to a proposal that pumps and channels quite generally are dark magnetic flux tubes and protons (and also other ions) are transferred through them as dark protons (dark ions). This would imply
    almost dissipationless transfer.

  2. The protons are pumped as dark protons through the thylakoid membrane along dark magnetic flux tubes serving as pumps using the energy provided by electrons flowing down in the electron chain. The dark protons return from grana through ATP synthase as dark protons as ATP is generated and transform with some rate back to ordinary protons in stroma. Otherwise the fraction of dark protons would steadily increase.

  3. This leaves two options under consideration. Already the step 2H2O → 4H+ +4e- + O2 step 2H2O → 4H+ +4e- + O2 creates dark protons by a generalization of Pollack's mechanism or this step creates ordinary protons transformed by Pollack's mechanism to dark protons as they are transferred to dark magnetic flux tubes serving as pumps. The first option looks more plausible.

What is interesting is the electron transfer chain is involved also with the cellular breathing. There are various light therapies using red or IR light, and they seem to provide basically metabolic energy. Cells would act like plant cells and the analog of photosynthesis could be in question. This would explain the claims that the members of some religious cults can practically live utilizing only sunlight. I have actually proposed that analog of photosynthesis storing the energy by ADP+Pi→ ATP type process using standard machinery could be actually involved and transfer the energy of IR light to metabolic energy further distributed by ATP.

The metabolic machinery for cellular breathing contains so called oxidative phosphorylation (OP) as a basic step: OP adds to ADP a phosphate giving metabolic currency ATP. ATP in turn distributes the metabolic energy further. OP uses electron transport chain to transfer metabolic energy from NADH by NADH → NAD+ H+ +2e-. The electrons go through the electron transport chain as in photosynthesis and transfer protons outside the mitochondrial membrane very much like in photosynthesis. The protons return through ATP-synthase and induce ADP+Pi → ATP.

The metabolic energy must come from somewhere and OP indeed follows Krebs cycle in which the energy is extracted from nutrients and given to the NADP molecule. The photon energy could be feeded directly to OP electron transfer chain just as photon energy is transferred to this chain in photosynthesis. The presence of electron transfer chain is necessary and one must feed the electrons and protons to this chain somehow.

  1. Could the analog of photosynthetic reaction 2H2O → 4H+ +4e- + O2 with visible photons replaced with IR photons produce dark protons? Whether this is energetically possible and whether the electrons have high enough energies to drive the dark protons through the membrane is far from clear. One can of course imagine, that the number of pumped protons per electron is lower than usually.

  2. A mechanism that I have called quantum credit card and remote metabolism looks more plausible. The splitting 2H2O → 4H+ +4e- + O2 could occur - not by absorption of positive energy photon but by emission of negative dark IR photon with the energy of visible photon. Cell would actively suck metabolic energy from IR light source. The emitted dark negative energy IR photon would decay to ordinary IR photons in reverse time direction, which would look like fusion in standard time direction and is thermodynamically non-favoured. ZEO predicting kind of syntropic processes to occur in living matter
    would be an essential prerequisite.

At deeper level metabolic energy might correspond to negentropic entanglement and thus information. Information could be the basic metabolic currency.

For background see the chapter "Macroscopic quantum coherence and metabolism as different sides of the same coin or the brief note Pollack’s mechanism and photosynthesis.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

1 comment:

corinthians countree said...

This is not a comment as I gave up on engineering and went only as far in chemistry to get a BA in Biology. This is a question. How could gluon emissions be controlled to structure atoms?