Matter living

Nitrogen is an essential constituent of all living matter, being one of the elements present in proteins. Proteins are synthesised by... 

Phosphorus, like nitrogen, is an essential constituent of living matter where it may be partly in combination (as phosphate groups) with organic groups, for example in lecithin and egg yolk, or mainly in inorganic form, as calcium phosphate(V), in bones and teeth. 

Mineral Matter in Goal. The mineral matter (7,38) in coal results from several separate processes. Some comes from the material inherent in all living matter some from the detrital minerals deposited during the time of peat formation and a third type from secondary minerals that crystallized from water which has percolated through the coal seams. 

Sterilization of Media First-order kinetics may be assumed for heat destruction of living matter, and this leads to a linear relationship when logarithm of the fraction surviving is plotted against time. However, nonlogarithmic kinetics of death are quite often found for bacterial spores. One model for such behavior assumes inactivation of spores via a sensitive intermediate state by the mechanism ... 

The places from which pollutants emanate are called sources. There are natural as well as anthropogenic sources of the permanent gases considered to be pollutants. These include plant and animal respiration and the decay of what was once living matter. Volcanoes and naturally caused forest fires are other natural sources. The places to which pollutants disappear from the air are called sinks. Sinks include the soil, vegetation, structures, and water bodies, particularly the oceans. The mechanisms whereby pollutants... 

Cell The smallest structural unit of living matter capable of functioning independently it is a microscopic mass of protoplasm surrounded by a semipermeable membrane, including one or more nuclei and various non-living substances that are capable, either alone or with other cells, of performing all the fundamental functions of life. 

Organic Relating to or derived from living matter that has organs or an organized physical structure. Organic chemistry is the study of carbon compounds. 

J. J. Berzelius classified compounds as organic or inorganic according to their origin in living matter or inanimate material. 

Nucleic acids have recently attracted the attention of very numerous laboratories. This is because nucleic acids belong to the most important components of living matter, for genetic traits are fixed in them and transmitted through them. Nucleic acids also play the main role during biosynthesis of specific proteins. 

A most important class of polyamides is that of the proteins, the essential structures of all living matter. In addition, they are a necessary part in the diet of man because they are the source of the monomeric units, the amino acids, from which living protein materials are made. 

Biomass or mass of living matter, living cells in a liquid solution with essential nutrients at suitable temperature and pH leads to cell growth. As a result, the content of biomass increases with time. 

Terrestrial biomass is divided into a number of subreservoirs with different turnover times. Forests contain approximately 90% of all carbon in living matter on land but their NPP is only 60% of the total. About half of the primary production in forests yields twigs, leaves, shrubs, and herbs that only make up 10% of the biomass. Carbon in wood has a turnover time of the order of 50 years, whereas turnover times of carbon in leaves, flowers, fruits, and rootlets are less than a few years. When plant material becomes detached from the living, plant carbon is moved from the phytomass reservoir to litter. "Litter" can either refer to a layer of dead plant material on the soil or all plant materials not attached to a living plant. A litter layer can be a... 

C Carbon All living matter contains carbon compounds... 

Inorganic chemicals are derived from minerals in the ground or from the air, not from living matter. Some idea about the importance of this branch of the chemical industry is illustrated by reviewing the ten largest production volume chemicals, their sources, and uses. 

Properties Oxygen is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas, that makes up about 21% of the Earth s atmosphere. It is essential to life for almost all living matter. It is found in nature in combination with all elements except the so-called rare gases (helium, argon, and neon). It can be liquefied under pressure. 

Wohler (1828) synthesized urea (an organic compound found in human urine) from lead cyanate and ammonium hydroxide, neither of which are found in living matter. 

All organic chemicals are, by definition, based on chemicals derived from living matter. Thus, the ten highest-volume commercial organic chemicals are all made from starting materials obtained from petroleum (oil) and natural gas, which are believed to have been formed by the microbial decomposition of ancient marine plants and animals. 

Krebs HA, Kornberg HL Energy Transformations in Living Matter. Springer, 1957. 

Life as we know it depends on this existence of water as a liquid. Biochemical processes require free movement of chemicals, which cannot occur in the solid phase. Biochemical stmctures contain many interlocking parts that would not be stable in the gas phase. Thus, the liquid phase is best suited for life. Moreover, water is an excellent solvent, particularly for molecules that can form hydrogen bonds. As we describe in Chapter JA, the molecular building blocks of living matter are rich in groups that form hydrogen bonds. This allows biological molecules to be synthesized, move about, and assemble into complex structures, all in aqueous solution. 

For example, living matter relies on enzymes, which are the most specific catalysts one can think of. Also, the chemical industry cannot exist without catalysis, which is an indispensable tool in the production of bulk chemicals, fine chemicals and fuels. 

How relevant are these phenomena First, many oscillating reactions exist and play an important role in living matter. Biochemical oscillations and also the inorganic oscillatory Belousov-Zhabotinsky system are very complex reaction networks. Oscillating surface reactions though are much simpler and so offer convenient model systems to investigate the realm of non-equilibrium reactions on a fundamental level. Secondly, as mentioned above, the conditions under which nonlinear effects such as those caused by autocatalytic steps lead to uncontrollable situations, which should be avoided in practice. Hence, some knowledge about the subject is desired. Finally, the application of forced oscillations in some reactions may lead to better performance in favorable situations for example, when a catalytic system alternates between conditions where the catalyst deactivates due to carbon deposition and conditions where this deposit is reacted away. 

The term organic chemistry was first used by the Swedish chemist Berzelius in 1807 (Larsson, 1981). He coined the name to describe the chemistry of substances derived from living matter. Berzelius was a staunch believer in the vis vitalis theory, which held that such substances were endowed with a mystical vital force that precluded their synthesis in the laboratory from materials of mineral origin. Ironically, it was a student of Berzelius, Wohler, who heralded the demise of vitalism with his synthesis of urea from ammonium cyanate (Wohler, 1928). In a letter to Berzelius in 1828, Wohler wrote I must tell you that I can make urea without requiring kidneys, or even an animal, whether a human being or a dog . 

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