Water is an active matrix of life for cell and molecular biology
Open accessAbstract
Szent-Győrgi called water the “matrix of life” and claimed that there was no life without it. This statement is true, as far as we know, on our planet, but it is not clear whether it must hold throughout the cosmos. To evaluate that question requires a close consideration of the many varied and subtle roles that water plays in living cells—a consideration that must be free of both an assumed essentialism that gives water an almost mystical life-giving agency and a traditional tendency to see it as a merely passive solvent. Water is a participant in the “life of the cell,” and here I describe some of the features of that active agency. Water's value for molecular biology comes from both the structural and dynamic characteristics of its status as a complex, structured liquid as well as its nature as a polar, protic, and amphoteric reagent. Any discussion of water as life’s matrix must, however, begin with an acknowledgment that our understanding of it as both a liquid and a solvent is still incomplete.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
One major function of the aqueous phase is the solvation of macromolecules, metabolites, and ions.
“One major function of this aqueous phase is the solvation of macromolecules, metabolites, and ions.40”
From Metals in Motion: Understanding Labile Metal Pools in Bacteria (2025) · cites this paper as [40]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Is there a common chemical model for life in the universe?
Benner, S. A., Ricardo, A., & Carrigan, M. A. (2004) · Current Opinion in Chemical Biology · doi:10.1016/j.cbpa.2004.10.003 · Cited by 363 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Tanford C (1980) The Hydrophobic Effect (Wiley, New York), 2nd Ed.
- Mondal S, Mukherjee S, Bagchi B (2017) Dynamical coupling between protein conformational fluctuation and hydration water: Heterogeneous dynamics of biological water. arXiv:1701.04861. · arXiv
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Atomic-scale mapping of hydrophobic layers on graphene and few-layer MoS2 and WSe2 in water
Uhlig, M. R., Martin-Jimenez, D., & Garcia, R. (2019) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-019-10740-w · Cited by 138 · see citing works
Water and Life: The Medium is the Message
Frenkel-Pinter, M., Rajaei, V., Glass, J. B., Hud, N. V., & Williams, L. D. (2021) · Journal of Molecular Evolution · doi:10.1007/s00239-020-09978-6 · Cited by 71 · see citing works
Scientific novelty beyond the experiment
Hallsworth, J. E., Udaondo, Z., Pedrós‐Alió, C., Höfer, J., Benison, K. C., Lloyd, K. G., Cordero, R. J. B., de Campos, C. B. L., Yakimov, M. M., & Amils, R. (2023) · Microbial Biotechnology · doi:10.1111/1751-7915.14222 · Cited by 62 · see citing works
Metals in Motion: Understanding Labile Metal Pools in Bacteria
Helmann, J. D. (2025) · Biochemistry · doi:10.1021/acs.biochem.4c00726 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
- Authors
- Ball, P.
- Affiliations
- Princeton University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Ball, Philip
- ORCID
- Ball, Philip
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2017-06-07
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 51
- Pages
- 13327-13335
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5754758
- OpenAlex
- W2624274285
- Cited by
- 484
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 41 · 2025: 54 · 2024: 49 · 2023: 70 · 2022: 53 · 2021: 56 · 2020: 62 · 2019: 60 · 2018: 33 · 2017: 5 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 24.47
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Biophysics › Chemical and Physical Studies
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Protein Structure and Dynamics
- Keywords
- water, Szent-Györgyi, water as solvent, structured liquids, polar protic solvents, origin of life, extraterrestrial life
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Humans, Protein Conformation, Water, Molecular Dynamics Simulation, Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
