Association of Ions and Water with Macromolecules

Abstract

The term living state has a specific meaning in the association—induction (AI) hypothesis, as suggested in the title of the monograph published twenty-two years ago: A Physical Theory of the Living State (Ling, 1962). In this concept the living state does not mean merely the presence of an assortment of the right ingredients in the right stoichiometric proportions, even though this requirement is vital; rather, the living state denotes two additional criteria: that the right ingredients are in a correct physical relation to one another in space-time coordinates, and that together in the resting cell they exist in a high-energy, low-entropy state.