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Updated: Jul 27, 2025

Unraveling Entropic Rate Acceleration Induced by Solvent Dynamics in Membrane Enzymes
Published on: January 16, 2016
Cells Solved the Gibbs Paradox by Learning to Contain Entropic Forces
1University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine: Reno, NV 89521 USA.
Abstract:
As Nature's version of machine learning, evolution has solved many extraordinarily complex problems, none perhaps more remarkable than learning to harness an increase in chemical entropy (disorder) to generate directed chemical forces (order). Using muscle as a model system, here I unpack the basic mechanism by which life creates order from disorder. In short, evolution tuned the physical properties of certain proteins to contain changes in chemical entropy. As it happens, these are the "sensible" properties Gibbs postulated were needed to solve his paradox.
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