Water and the Cell

by Gerald H. Pollack (Editor), Ivan L. Cameron (Editor), Denys N. Wheatley (Editor)

This book deals with the role of water in cell function. Long recognized to be central to cell function, water’s role has not received the attention lately that it deserves. This book brings the role of water front and central. It presents the most recent work of the leading authorities on the subject, culminating in a series of sometimes astonishing observations. This volume will be of interest to a broad audience.

Genres: Health

363 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Professor Gerald Pollack is Founding Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal, WATER and is recognized as an international leader in science and engineering.

The University of Washington Faculty chose Pollack, in 2008, to receive their highest annual distinction: the Faculty Lecturer Award. He was the 2012 recipient of the coveted Prigogine Medal for thermodynamics of dissipative systems. He has received an honorary doctorate from Ural State University in Ekaterinburg, Russia, and was more recently named an Honorary Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Foreign Member of the Srpska Academy. Pollack is a Founding Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and a Fellow of both the American Heart Association and the Biomedical Engineering Society. He recently received an NIH Director’s Transformative R01 Award for his work on water, and maintains an active laboratory in Seattle.

Pollack’s interests have ranged broadly, from biological motion and cell biology to the interaction of biological surfaces with aqueous solutions. His 1990 book, Muscles and Molecules Uncovering the Principles of Biological Motion, won an “Excellence Award” from the Society for Technical Communication; two subsequent books: Cells Gels and the Engines of Life,and The Fourth Phase of Water both won that Society’s “Distinguished Award.”

Pollack is recognized worldwide as a dynamic speaker and a scientist willing to challenge any long-held dogma that does not fit the facts.

Reviews

[Mike Lisanke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This may be considered a follow-on book to this author's work, The Fourth Phase of Water. It's less conversational than his later book but written very much in the style of the researcher/scientist describing in detail the experiments with graphics representing data points and many references to related work and details. Pollack has a very descriptive and clear writing style and the intent of each experiment done and its related theory of water's unique interactions in the cell was provided. I'd recommend this book as providing supplemental detail useful in understanding the later book. I also plan on reading his 3rd book on Cells Gels and Engines of Life. Hopefully, I'll have a complete picture of what the author has discovered about water and its relationship to living systems.

[Audrey Swank · Rating 5 out of 5]

This wide-ranging collection was extremely helpful for parsing out more of the implications of the association-induction hypothesis.

[Mark Moon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the papers in this collection come from journals that engage in predatory open access publishing, and as such are somewhat suspect. But with that caveat, there's a lot of good stuff in here about the ongoing revolution in our understanding of intracellular and (more generally) interfacial/vicinal water.