This paper reports an experimental study in testing a new hypothesis on proton-electrostatic localization over Mitchell's Chemiosmotic theory in Bioenergetics. In Mitchell's Chemiosmotic theory, protons are treated as solutes like sugar molecules in water so that they were thought to stay in the bulk aqueous phase. According to the proton-electrostatics localization hypothesis (2012 Bioenergetics, 1:104; doi:10.4172/2167-7662.1000104), the excess protons in a biologically relevant size of water body should be treated like electric charges in a conductor.  Because of this feature, for example, the excess protons in a thylakoid lumen may electrostatically localize at its lumenal water-membrane interface. The hypothesis further predicts that other cations such as Na+ and K+ may, in some extent, be able to exchange for the electrostatically localized protons.  Since protons are the pointiest cations and can exist as part of the water molecules, the predicted equilibrium constant for protons to electrostatically occupy the cation sites at the water-membrane interface (in any possible competition with any other cations) is likely to be much larger than one.  In this experiment, we successfully generated excess protons utilizing a three-chamber system through application of a special �open-circuit� water-electrolysis process and demonstrated a layer of electrostatically localized protons at a water-membrane interface, for the first time, using a proton-sensing film. Furthermore, our preliminary result indicated that the equilibrium constant for protons (H+) to electrostatically occupy the cation sites at the water-membrane interface was about 10+7 as predicted. That is, the electrostatically localized protons at the water-surface interface is quite stable, in that it would require more than 10+7 times more Na+ cations than the protons in the aqueous phase to delocalize the protons (H+) from the water-membrane interface. This gives confidence that the proton-electrostatic localization hypothesis is likely to be a correct and robust concept under biologically relevant conditions.

Experimental bioenergetics study: Electrostatically localized protons

246th National Meeting (2013)

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