Very interesting... Only a few short years ago this entire article would have been science fiction.
From the article: "The platinum acts as a catalyst, stripping electrons from glucose molecules, similar to how aerobic animal cells (such as our own) strip electrons from glucose with enzymes and oxygen."
I wonder, and am curious to learn more about, how much of this process is really understood by modern science.
We can have a better handle on what happens inside a given cell than the complex web of cause and effect that happens between populations of different kinds of cells and their environment.
What goes on inside your gut is still more of a mystery than what goes on inside your cells.
Comments
Very interesting... Only a few short years ago this entire article would have been science fiction.
From the article: "The platinum acts as a catalyst, stripping electrons from glucose molecules, similar to how aerobic animal cells (such as our own) strip electrons from glucose with enzymes and oxygen."
I wonder, and am curious to learn more about, how much of this process is really understood by modern science.
Quite well understood actually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_respiration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_transport_chain
One of the fundamental biochemical pathways and required reading for entry level life-sciences degree programs.
We can have a better handle on what happens inside a given cell than the complex web of cause and effect that happens between populations of different kinds of cells and their environment.
What goes on inside your gut is still more of a mystery than what goes on inside your cells.
What is the actual chemical reaction going on here?
Reduction of one molecule; oxidation of another. The long version comprises textbooks, but that is the short version.
Frighteningly well understood. The level of detail in which the electron transport chain is known is astonishing.