Living Cell Cytosol Stability to Segregation and Freezing-Out:Thermodynamic aspect

TL;DR

This paper explores the thermodynamic stability of living cell cytosol, highlighting its unique ability to maintain equilibrium despite having phases with positive and negative pressures, which aids in reagent transport.

Contribution

It introduces a thermodynamic model describing cytosol as a phase with opposing pressures, providing a new perspective on cellular stability and reagent transport mechanisms.

Findings

Cytosol can exist in a stable equilibrium with phases of opposite signs of pressure.

Theoretical conditions for stability of such a medium are derived using thermodynamics.

The model explains cytosol's ability to sort and transport reagents without a physical pipeline.

Abstract

The cytosol state in living cell is treated as homogeneous phase equilibrium with a special feature: the pressure of one phase is positive and the pressure of the other is negative. From this point of view the cytosol is neither solution nor gel (or sol as a whole) regardless its components (water and dissolved substances). This is its unique capability for selecting, sorting and transporting reagents to the proper place of the living cell without a so-called "pipeline". To base this statement the theoretical investigation of the conditions of equilibrium and stability of the medium with alternative-sign pressure is carried out under using the thermodynamic laws and the Gibbs' equilibrium criterium.