Isotopic resonance hypothesis

Similarly, a sharp increase (or decrease) in the reaction kinetics as a function of the average isotopic mass of a certain element is called here a resonance.

With his enunciation of the whole-number rule, Aston solved a problem that had riddled chemistry for a hundred years.

[citation needed] It was early on found that the deuterium content had a profound effect on chemistry and biochemistry.

However, it has been reported in 1930s,[3] and then again in 1970s[4][5] and 1990s,[6] as well as recently,[7] that relatively small changes in the content of the heavy isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, has profound effects on biological systems.

If NIS is plotted as a function of NMD for a large number of terrestrial peptides, one would anticipate a homogenous distribution of data points (as in Fig.

Curiously, average terrestrial isotopic compositions are very close to a resonance affecting a large class of amino acids and polypeptides, the molecules of outmost importance for life.

[8] One would expect that enrichment of heavy isotopes leads to progressively slower reactions, but the IsoRes hypothesis suggests that there exist certain resonance compositions for which kinetics increases even for higher abundances of heavy stable isotopes.

For example, at 9.5% 13C, 10.9% 15N and 6.6% 18O (when all three elements are 10-35 times enriched compared to their natural abundances) and normal deuterium composition (150 ppm or 0.015%), a very strong resonance (Fig.

[8][9] The IsoRes hypothesis has been tested experimentally by means of growth of E. coli and found to be supported by extremely strong statistics (p << 10−15).

A – terrestrial isotopic compositions (red arrow shows the line representing the resonance); B – 18O abundance is increased by 20%, which destroyed the terrestrial resonance; C – isotopic compositions of the “super-resonance”, where all dots (molecules) are perfectly aligned.