BENGALURU: A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), which has been studying the role of water in biological reactions, reported new findings recently.
Reiterating that water is regarded as the “matrix of life”, the team pointed out that how exactly water helps in biological reactions has perplexed researchers for years.
In a recent work led by Prof Biman Bagchi at IISc’s Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit (SSCU), researchers attempted to understand this by focusing on three proteins: myoglobin, GB1, and dimeric insulin.
“In each of these systems, they considered a single reaction coordinate (hydrogen bond or coordination) and studied the effect of water on its dissociation. More specifically, they calculated the fiction components on the bond, separately from protein and water,” an IISc statement read.
Their investigation has revealed that the cross-correlation between the forces from these two domains results in a negative friction term at the reaction coordinate, which reduces the total friction and effectively increases the reaction rate.
Aside from Bagchi, the team includes Saumyak Mukherjee, Sayantan Mondal and Subhajit Acharya, all from SSCU.
