Comparative biochemistry : a comprehensive treatise 2: free energy and biological function

The aim of this Treatise on Comparative Biochemistry is to provide a sound, critical, and provocative summary of present knowledge in the field. Although comparative biochemistry is the most recent approach to the study of biology, its domain is vast because it seeks to compare the physicochemical properties of every form of life. In this sense it includes ail of biochemistry, not only those aspects common to life in general, but also the unique physicochemical manifestations which are characteristic of each of the several million species of living organisms comprising the phylogenetic scale. Biological diversity is inherently as interesting to comparative biochemistry as biological unity. Furthermore, comparative biochemistry is concerned not only with contemporary life, but with life of all ages reaching back to origins; it views evolution in terms of molecular rather than morphological changes. In order to provide a systematic comparison of the biochemical phenomena of life throughout the phylogenetic scale, which has been our objective, the Treatise has been organized in the following manner: Volumes I and II are primarily concerned with the biological transformations of free energy. Volume I deals with the sources of biologically useful free energy, while Volume II describes how this free energy is utilized to support function. The structures of the principal classes of metabolites, their distributions, and the comparative enzymology of their biogenesis and metabolism are the subjects of Volumes III and IV. The comparative biochemistry of organized reactions Systems and the biological functions dependent upon these Systems are discussed in Volumes V and VI.