[Fis] Molecular recognition and the foundamental laws of information

From: Dr. Shu-Kun Lin <[email protected]>
Date: Mon 14 Jul 2003 - 19:44:40 CEST

Dear FISers,

Molecular recognition was the very first case which forces us to
expand thermodynamic entropy concept to be an information theory
entropy concept, because the mixing of two idea gases (mixing of oxygen and
nitrogen, for instance) cannot be described by any detectable change
of thermodynamic parameters (no heat change, no pressure change, no volume
change and no temperature change). Therefore, the related Gibbs paradox regarding
ideal gas mixing can never be logically discussed within the frame
of thermodynamics. Their mixing has no heat effect and there is no entropy change
(remember the thermodynamic entropy DeltaS=Heat/kT, where T is temperature, k the
Boltzmann constant).

Why? The heat engine (of thermodynamics) simply
cannot recognize any differences between oxygen and nitrogen.
A chemical sensors can recognize. Then it is molecular recognition. I just
represented a poster at our Sensors conference in Paris
(http://www.mdpi.net/sensors/I3S/).

One kind of molecular recognition is very much the same as
ideal gas mixing. It is the complementary molecular docking.
A search in yahoo.com found many hits:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?x=wrt&p=complementary+molecular+docking&vm=i&n=20&fl=0
The first paper is http://www.ices.utexas.edu/CCV/papers/dock.pdf.
If the ligand and the host molecules are both hydrophobic,
it is just like a mixing of ideal gases. Such kind of molecular recognition
cannot be measured or assessed by energy landscape or
thermodynamic entropy landscape during the process.

That is why I suggested two laws of revised information theory in
my recent paper at http://www.mdpi.org/ijms/htm/i2010010/i2010010.htm
to replace the two thermodynamic laws:

The first law of information theory: the logarithmic function L (the sum
of entropy and information) of an isolated system remains unchanged.

The second law of information theory: Information I of an isolated system
decreases to a minimum at equilibrium.

These two laws cannot be proved. However, with these two laws in hand, I easily proved
the symmetry principle: the higher the symmetry, the more stable a system will
be. Now (only now) we can consider the molecular recognition
in details because thermodynamics is actually useless for molecular
recognition consideration.

That is my humble idea. Please criticize.

Shu-Kun

--
Dr. Shu-Kun Lin
Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI)
Matthaeusstrasse 11, CH-4057 Basel, Switzerland
Tel. +41 79 322 3379, Fax +41 61 302 8918
e-mail: lin@mdpi.org
http://www.mdpi.org/lin
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Received on Mon Jul 14 19:39:28 2003

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