Surface Hydration May Regulate Space in Living Cells.
- Recent studies indicate that, as polypeptides are released from ribosomes, their lipid regions become coated with unstable ice-like linear elements of hydration which, as they leave, withdraw energy from the molecules and convert them into lower energy linear segments and coils, which then fold together to form the anhydrous cores of the proteins. The image on the left is an ultra-high-speed crystallographic view of what these transient linear and cubic units of water may look like. Although they last only about a million millionth of a second, they assist in directing the assembly of proteins and interactions between the molecules of life.