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Clinical Nutrition (Edinburgh, Scotland) Jun 2006The authors focus on water resources and the use of mineral waters in human nutrition, especially in the different stages of life, in physical activity and in the... (Review)
Review
The authors focus on water resources and the use of mineral waters in human nutrition, especially in the different stages of life, in physical activity and in the presence of some morbid conditions. Mineral water is characterized by its purity at source, its content in minerals, trace elements and other constituents, its conservation and its healing properties recognized by the Ministry of Health after clinical and pharmacological trials. Based on total salt content in grams after evaporation of 1l mineral water dried at 180 degrees C (dry residues), mineral waters can be classified as: waters with a very low mineral content, waters low in mineral content, waters with a medium mineral content, and strongly mineralized waters. Based on ion composition mineral waters can be classified as: bicarbonate waters, sulfate waters, sodium chloride or saltwater, sulfuric waters. Based on biological activity mineral waters can be classified as: diuretic waters, cathartic waters, waters with antiphlogistic properties. Instructions for use, doses, and current regulations are included.
Topics: Bicarbonates; Body Water; Drinking; Health; Humans; Mineral Waters; Minerals; Sodium Chloride; Sulfates; Sulfur; Water
PubMed: 16314004
DOI: 10.1016/j.clnu.2005.10.002 -
Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and... Dec 2020Telomeres length and telomerase activity are currently considered aging molecular stigmata. Water is a major requirement for our body and water should be alkaline....
Telomeres length and telomerase activity are currently considered aging molecular stigmata. Water is a major requirement for our body and water should be alkaline. Recent reports have shown that aging is related to a reduced water intake. We wanted to investigate the effect of the daily intake of alkaline water on the molecular hallmark of aging and the anti-oxidant response. We watered a mouse model of aging with or without alkaline supplementation. After 10 months, we obtained the blood, the bone marrow and the ovaries from both groups. In the blood, we measured the levels of ROS, SOD-1, GSH, and the telomerase activity and analysed the bone marrow and the ovaries for the telomeres length. We found reduced ROS levels and increased SOD-1, GSH, telomerase activity and telomeres length in alkaline supplemented mice. We show here that watering by using alkaline water supplementation highly improves aging at the molecular level.
Topics: Aging; Alkalies; Animals; Antioxidants; Dietary Supplements; Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; Female; Mice; Mice, Inbred C57BL; Molecular Structure; Structure-Activity Relationship; Water
PubMed: 32106720
DOI: 10.1080/14756366.2020.1733547 -
Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) Dec 2011In many situations, form biology to geology, water occurs not as the pure bulk liquid but rather in nanoscopic environments, in contact with interfaces, interacting with... (Review)
Review
In many situations, form biology to geology, water occurs not as the pure bulk liquid but rather in nanoscopic environments, in contact with interfaces, interacting with ionic species, and interacting with large organic molecules. In such situations, water does not behave in the same manner as it does in the pure bulk liquid. Water dynamics are fundamental to many processes such as protein folding and proton transport. Such processes depend on the dynamics of water's hydrogen bonding network. Here, the results of ultrafast infrared experiments are described that shed light on the influences of nanoconfinement, interfaces, ions, and organic molecules on water hydrogen bond dynamics.
Topics: Anisotropy; Hydrogen Bonding; Ions; Micelles; Water
PubMed: 22170957
DOI: 10.1152/physiol.00021.2011 -
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal... Dec 2003Water, the bloodstream of the biosphere, determines the sustainability of living systems. The essential role of water is expanded in a conceptual model of energy... (Review)
Review
Water, the bloodstream of the biosphere, determines the sustainability of living systems. The essential role of water is expanded in a conceptual model of energy dissipation, based on the water balance of whole landscapes. In this model, the underlying role of water phase changes--and their energy-dissipative properties--in the function and the self-organized development of natural systems is explicitly recognized. The energy-dissipating processes regulate the ecological dynamics within the Earth's biosphere, in such a way that the development of natural systems is never allowed to proceed in an undirected or random way. A fundamental characteristic of self-organized development in natural systems is the increasing role of cyclic processes while loss processes are correspondingly reduced. This gives a coincidental increase in system efficiency, which is the basis of growing stability and sustainability. Growing sustainability can be seen as an increase of ecological efficiency, which is applicable at all levels up to whole landscapes. Criteria for necessary changes in society and for the design of the measures that are necessary to restore sustainable landscapes and waters are derived.
Topics: Conservation of Natural Resources; Ecosystem; Human Activities; Models, Economic; Models, Theoretical; Periodicity; Politics; Social Responsibility; Thermodynamics; Water
PubMed: 14728789
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2003.1378 -
Tree Physiology Nov 2022Introductory biology lessons around the world typically teach that plants absorb water through their roots, but, unfortunately, absorption of water through leaves and...
Introductory biology lessons around the world typically teach that plants absorb water through their roots, but, unfortunately, absorption of water through leaves and subsequent transport and use of this water for biomass formation remains a field limited mostly to specialists. Recent studies have identified foliar water uptake as a significant net water source for terrestrial plants. The growing interest in the development of a new model that includes both foliar water uptake (in liquid form) and root water uptake to explain hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios in leaf water and tree rings demands a method for distinguishing between these two water sources. Therefore, in this study, I have devised a new labelling method that utilizes two different water sources, one enriched in deuterium (HDO + D2O; δD = 7.0 × 10 4‰, δ18O = 4.1‰) and one enriched in oxygen-18 (H218O; δD = -85‰, δ18O = 1.1 × 104‰), to simultaneously label both foliar-absorbed and root-absorbed water and quantify their relative contributions to plant biomass. Using this new method, I here present evidence that, in the case of well-watered Cryptomeria japonica D. Don, hydrogen and oxygen incorporated into new leaf cellulose in the rainy season derives mostly from foliar-absorbed water (69% from foliar-absorbed water and 31% from root-absorbed water), while that of new root cellulose derives mostly from root-absorbed water (20% from foliar-absorbed water and 80% from root-absorbed water), and new branch xylem is somewhere in between (55% from foliar-absorbed water and 45% from root-absorbed water). The dual-labelling method first implemented in this study enables separate and simultaneous labelling of foliar-absorbed and root-absorbed water and offers a new tool to study the uptake, transport and assimilation processes of these waters in terrestrial plants.
Topics: Water; Hydrogen; Biomass; Oxygen; Plant Leaves; Plants; Cellulose
PubMed: 35554604
DOI: 10.1093/treephys/tpac055 -
Journal of the American Chemical Society Dec 2018Liquid water is considered poorly understood. How are water's physical properties encoded in its molecular structure? We introduce a statistical mechanical model...
Liquid water is considered poorly understood. How are water's physical properties encoded in its molecular structure? We introduce a statistical mechanical model (CageWater) of water's hydrogen-bonding (HB) and Lennard-Jones (LJ) interactions. It predicts the energetic and volumetric and anomalous properties accurately. Yet, because the model is analytical, it is essentially instantaneous to compute. This model advances our understanding beyond current molecular simulations and experiments. Water has long been regarded as a "2-density liquid": a dense LJ liquid and a looser HB one. Instead, we find here a different antagonism underlying water structure-property relations: HBs in water-water pairs drive density, while HBs in cooperative cages drive openness. The balance shifts strongly with temperature and pressure. This model interprets the molecular structures underlying the liquid-liquid phase transition in supercooled water. It may have value in geophysics, biomolecular modeling, and engineering of materials for water purification and green chemistry.
Topics: Hydrogen Bonding; Models, Chemical; Phase Transition; Pressure; Static Electricity; Temperature; Thermodynamics; Water
PubMed: 30461279
DOI: 10.1021/jacs.8b08856 -
Current Medicinal Chemistry 2019The inclusion of direct effects mediated by water during the ligandreceptor recognition is a hot-topic of modern computational chemistry applied to drug discovery and... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
The inclusion of direct effects mediated by water during the ligandreceptor recognition is a hot-topic of modern computational chemistry applied to drug discovery and development. Docking or virtual screening with explicit hydration is still debatable, despite the successful cases that have been presented in the last years. Indeed, how to select the water molecules that will be included in the docking process or how the included waters should be treated remain open questions.
OBJECTIVE
In this review, we will discuss some of the most recent methods that can be used in computational drug discovery and drug development when the effect of a single water, or of a small network of interacting waters, needs to be explicitly considered.
RESULTS
Here, we analyse the software to aid the selection, or to predict the position, of water molecules that are going to be explicitly considered in later docking studies. We also present software and protocols able to efficiently treat flexible water molecules during docking, including examples of applications. Finally, we discuss methods based on molecular dynamics simulations that can be used to integrate docking studies or to reliably and efficiently compute binding energies of ligands in presence of interfacial or bridging water molecules.
CONCLUSIONS
Software applications aiding the design of new drugs that exploit water molecules, either as displaceable residues or as bridges to the receptor, are constantly being developed. Although further validation is needed, workflows that explicitly consider water will probably become a standard for computational drug discovery soon.
Topics: Drug Discovery; Molecular Docking Simulation; Molecular Dynamics Simulation; Protein Binding; Proteins; Thermodynamics; Water
PubMed: 29756561
DOI: 10.2174/0929867325666180514110824 -
Accounts of Chemical Research Aug 2008[Figure: see text]. Most chemical processes on earth are intimately linked to the unique properties of water, relying on the versatility with which water interacts with... (Review)
Review
[Figure: see text]. Most chemical processes on earth are intimately linked to the unique properties of water, relying on the versatility with which water interacts with molecules of varying sizes and polarities. These interactions determine everything from the structure and activity of proteins and living cells to the geological partitioning of water, oil, and minerals in the Earth's crust. The role of hydrophobic hydration in the formation of biological membranes and in protein folding, as well as the importance of electrostatic interactions in the hydration of polar and ionic species, are all well known. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms of hydration are often not as well understood. This Account summarizes and extends emerging understandings of these mechanisms to reveal a newly unified view of hydration and explain previously mystifying observations. For example, rare gas atoms (e.g., Ar) and alkali-halide ions (e.g., K+ and Cl-) have nearly identical experimental hydration entropies, despite the significant charge-induced reorganization of water molecules. Here, we explain how such previously mysterious observations may be understood as arising from Gibbs inequalities, which impose rigorous energetic upper and lower bounds on both hydration free energies and entropies. These fundamental Gibbs bounds depend only on the average interaction energy of a solute with water, thus providing a deep link between solute-water interaction energies and entropies. One of the surprising consequences of the emerging picture is the understanding that the hydration of an ion produces two large but nearly perfectly cancelling, entropic contributions: a negative ion-water interaction entropy and a positive water reorganization entropy. Recent work has also clarified the relationship between the strong cohesive energy of water and the free energy required to form an empty hole (cavity) in water. Here, we explain how linear response theory (whose roots may also be traced to Gibbs inequalities) can provide remarkably accurate descriptions of the process of filling aqueous cavities with nonpolar, polar, or charged molecules. The hydration of nonpolar molecules is well-described by first-order perturbation theory, which implies that turning on solute-water van der Waals interactions does not induce a significant change in water structure. The larger changes in water structure that are induced by polar and ionic solutes are well-described by second-order perturbation theory, which is equivalent to linear response theory. Comparisons of the free energies of nonpolar and polar or ionic solutes may be used to experimentally determine electrostatic contributions to water reorganization energies and entropies. The success of this approach implies that water's ability to respond to solutes of various polarities is far from saturated, as illustrated by simulations of acetonitrile (CH 3CN) in water, which reveal that even such a strongly dipolar solute only produces subtle changes in the structure of water.
Topics: Entropy; Linear Models; Solvents; Water
PubMed: 18710198
DOI: 10.1021/ar7001478 -
Science (New York, N.Y.) Mar 2014
Topics: Animals; Bacteria; Coleoptera; Cough; Humans; Plant Leaves; Rats; Skin; Sneezing; Surface Tension; Viruses; Water; Wettability
PubMed: 24626911
DOI: 10.1126/science.343.6176.1194 -
Annual Review of Biophysics and... 2005Water plays a central role in the structures and properties of biomolecules--proteins, nucleic acids, and membranes--and in their interactions with ligands and drugs.... (Review)
Review
Water plays a central role in the structures and properties of biomolecules--proteins, nucleic acids, and membranes--and in their interactions with ligands and drugs. Over the past half century, our understanding of water has been advanced significantly owing to theoretical and computational modeling. However, like the blind men and the elephant, different models describe different aspects of water's behavior. The trend in water modeling has been toward finer-scale properties and increasing structural detail, at increasing computational expense. Recently, our labs and others have moved in the opposite direction, toward simpler physical models, focusing on more global properties-water's thermodynamics, phase diagram, and solvation properties, for example-and toward less computational expense. Simplified models can guide a better understanding of water in ways that complement what we learn from more complex models. One ultimate goal is more tractable models for computer simulations of biomolecules. This review gives a perspective from simple models on how the physical properties of water-as a pure liquid and as a solvent-derive from the geometric and hydrogen bonding properties of water.
Topics: Biophysics; Computer Simulation; Entropy; Hydrogen Bonding; Ions; Models, Molecular; Models, Statistical; Monte Carlo Method; Thermodynamics; Water
PubMed: 15869376
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.biophys.34.040204.144517