The Greatest Error in Biological Sciences, Started in 1930 and Continuing Up to Now, Generating Numerous Profound Misunderstandings in Almost All Fields of Biology

Abstract

Is a cell a complex coacervate with distribution coefficients and adsorption coefficients as prime physical–chemical parameters allowing a low-entropy-driven bioenergetics based on coherence, as first proposed by Schrödinger in 1944? Or does a cell have ordinary water in solution with small solutes such as K+, separated by a membrane containing ion-pumps that must constantly oppose passive leaks? The latter viewpoint is known as "membrane-(pump)-theory" (MPT) which is still generally accepted in current physiology and cell biology, but is incompatible with many recent observations on intrinsically disordered proteins, membrane-less organelles, the (quantum) coherence of living systems, and with many crucial old observations. It is not yet generally known that MPT was fully falsified by Ling during the 60^ties and 70^ties and that Ling developed an adsorption and coherence based coacervate model for the living cell, with a whole set of experimentally approved new equations. All basic tenets of his so-called ‘association-induction-hypothesis’ (AIH) are experimentally approved. It is the aim of this review to demonstrate that the AIH is a good guide to interpret many contemporary physiological, physical-chemical and physical data of living cells and sub-cellular systems, particularly those on coherent behaviour, which are incompatible with MPT. It will be shown that we very much need Ling’s new bio-energetics and have to abandon that of MPT.