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Incorporating Biological Energy Paradigms

Lessons from ATP and nanotechnology for possible energy storage and production solutions.  Musings from Douglass A. White, Ph.D.

From: "Douglass A. White" < dpedtech@dpedtech.com>
To: "Sterling D. Allan" < sterlingda@greaterthings.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2003 9:32 AM
Subject: Re: Another Energy Resource

Dear Sterling,

Here is another approach someone could take.

DAW

[quoting]

Another Energy Resource

This approach involves recent breakthroughs in cell biochemistry that will almost certainly lead to amazing new nanotechnology applications with implications for the energy world. The key here is the rapidly growing understanding of the fine details of the processes of photosynthesis and respiration that take place in living cells. Of particular interest to the energy people are the photolysis carried on by the chlorophyll in the chloroplasts and the ATP/ADP cycle that occurs in the mitochondria. I have already briefly discussed the rapidly developing research on photolysis.

ATP is the energy machine in all living organisms. It was discovered in 1929 by Karl Lohmann and synthesized in 1948 by the 1957 Laureate, Alexander Todd. Fritz Lipmann (Nobel 1953) showed how it carred energy through its phosphate bonds. In 1960 Efraim Racker et al. isolated ATP synthase, the enzyme in the mitochondria that manages ATP. One part holds it to the membrane and a second part is a catalytic center for processing ATP. The same enzyme works in the chloroplasts and for the bacteria. In 1961 Peter Mitchell (Nobel 1978) introduced the theory of chemiosmosis involving hydrogen transport through the mitochondrial membrane.

In 1997 Paul Boyer, John Walker, and Jens Skou shared the Nobel prize in chemistry for their work on the ATP processes in cells. Boyer has worked on this since the 1950s and has developed a detailed understanding of how the ATP is processed. Walker, working from the 1980s did complementary work and verified Boyer's findings. Between them they came up with a beautiful model of a nanodevice that rotates inside the mitochondria as it processes ATP. ATP (adenosine triphosphate) is like a battery charged up. It gives off energy by losing a phosphate radical and dropping down to ADP (adenosine diphosphate), the discharged battery. ATP synthase recharges the battery back up to its ATP state. Skou's work pertained to the roles of ATP and an enzyme, ATP-ase, in the sodium-potassium ion transport system.

It's all a wonderful design. Go to the Nobel site and then read the press release for the 1997 chemistry Nobel. (The above material is mostly extracted from there.) A colleague of mine Dr. James Walker, who has developed a remarkable Quantum Imaging Technology for studying the inner processes of cells, calls the ATP synthase nanodevices Boyer Wheels, because they rotate like little turbines as they do their work. He has images of these tiny machines taken from cells.

Here's the kicker for the energy people. I quote this from the press release issued at the time of the Nobel presentation, October 15, 1997.
"Boyer and co-workers clarified that the enzyme (ATP synthase) functions in a very particular way. They found that, as opposed to the view generally held, the step requiring energy was not the synthesis of ATP from ADP and inorganic phosphate, but that energy was required to bind ADP and the phosphate to the enzyme and to release ATP. Nevertheless an energy surplus was stored in the ATP. In this respect ATP synthase differs from the majority of all enzymes, which bind and release substrates and products spontaneously, but for which the overall catalytic reaction requires energy. "

In other words, ATP releases MORE energy as it drops down to ADP than it takes the ATP synthase to pump it back up to ATP!! That means apparently there is a free energy device sitting right in every living cell.

Boyer calls the process a "binding change mechanism." How does the ATP cycle achieve its COP > 1.0? Perhaps Dr. Boyer or Dr. Watson or Dr. Walker or another of these intrepid explorers will be able to tell us as they go deeper into the magical structure of this biological nanomachine.

I believe will soon build ATP synthase nanomachines mounted on little hydrogen transport membranes. We will then use a supply of ATP as our free energy "battery". We will discharge energy by stripping off the third phosphate with an enzyme catalyst such as ATP-ase. The discharged ADP molecules will be then recycled by the ATP synthase.

In the entire process the ATP synthase, the ATP/ADP batteries, the phosphate radicals, and the ATP-ase are all recycled catalysts. We can also recycle some of the energy release from dephosphorylation to transport and pump the hydrogen needed to drive the phosphorylation process. We strip the whole process down to its essentials as a quasibiological energy pump.

What will we feed it? I don't know. Maybe it will simply live off energy that it draws in from the vacuum state of the unified field. How does it do this? How do we do it? I don't know for sure. The plant builds its body from CO2. We build our bodies from sugars and proteins -- eating plants and other animals. But the ATP/ADP process stripped to its bare essentials may just be a free energy device. Dr. Watson believes that it uses a quantum mechanical, fractal method to scale energy from below the Planck scale. His device also works that way apparently and may allow us to peer down into the quantum and subquantum regions and observe just what is going on.

Regards,

Douglass A. White

See also

• Google > cell+biochemistry+nanotechnology+applications

Page posted by Sterling D. Allan, August 3, 2003
Last updated December 03, 2004