Surface Inactivation of Bacterial Viruses and of Proteins

From Firenze University Press Journal: Substantia

Mark H. Adams, Department of Bacteriology, New York University College of Medicine

The extraordinary paper of Mark H. Adams: Surface Inactivation of Bac-terial Viruses and of Proteins appeared in a mainstream Journal of Physiology, in 1948.1It was neglected and has been ever since. In retrospect this was and is a tragedy for science of the very first order. Adams was recognised in his time as a brilliant bacteriologist who, sadly, died young (1912–1956). His peers completed a partially finished book on his work in 1959.3It was forgotten in the rush to join the DNA biological revolution. In that revolution the physical sciences, the physical chemistry of solutions, colloid and surface science have played almost no serious conceptual role at all. The biological/medical and the physico-chemical sciences have diverged almost completely, to a point where their languages are mutually incomprehensible. Of course, characterisation and diagnostics of disease by myriad new techniques has been essential to progress in medicine and biology. But the gap remains. We are missing something.

Adams paper circumscribes that something. To see why we remark that 1948 was the same year that Overbeek’s landmark thesis on colloid stability marked the basis for the DLVO theory of colloid stability. It introduced long ranged quantum mechanical, dispersion forces of interaction between particles and dominated thinking about forces until now. Its limitations were spelt out by Derjaguin and Overbeek. Many of these limitations appeared to be resolved by sophisticated further extensions that embraced many body forces via Lifshitz theory, on charge regulation, on effects due to solvent structure and molecular size. Direct force measurements between surfaces that confirmed theory, a challenge dating back before Newton, appeared to repre-sent a triumph.

But there was and remained an uneasy juxtaposition with the classical theories of the physical chemistry of electrolytes and electrochemistry, and colloid science. These theories, of pH, of activities, of pKas, of conduc-tivity, the electrical double layer, of zeta potentials that were developed before quantum mechanics, and ignored it. Dispersion forces between ions and ions and surfaces are the key to specific ion (Hofmeister) effects essential to biology. And hydration was unquantified. Add to that the fact that undefined anthropomorphic words like hydrophilic and hydrophobic figured prominently in the conversation and we have an unquantifiable mess. That is explicit in that standard measurements like pH and zeta potentials were based on inadequate theory. It got worse when it was realised that even the apparently impressive addition of Electromagnetic Quantum Field theory embodied in Lifshitz theory was flawed too, and that the ansatz of additivity of electro-static and electrodynamic fluctuation (dispersion) forces, the one treated in nonlinear theory, the other linear, violates the laws of physics.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/Substantia-2040

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