ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Water is an active matrix of life for cell and molecular biology.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 131 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
131 citing papers in PubMed.
- Different Amounts of Water Supplementation Improved Cognitive Performance and Mood among Young Adults after 12 h Water Restriction in Baoding, China: A Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT).International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Trial
- Metabolic Structure: A Paradigm Revisited in Light of the Fundamental Parameters of Living Systems.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Breaking hydrogen bond network enhances oxygenic photosynthesis of photosystem II.Fundamental research · 2026Article
- The Role of Water in Protein-Ligand Binding: Decisive Factor, Annoying Feature, or Indispensable Control Element: In Any Case, a Major Challenge.ChemMedChem · 2026Article
- The chemistry of habitable oceans in the Solar system.Nature communications · 2026Review
- Deciphering hydration patterns across RNA conformations: Insights into water-mediated RNA recognition.Current research in structural biology · 2026Article
- The principles of systems biology.Experimental physiology · 2026Review
- Alkaline mineral complex water protects piglets against viral infection by driving cholesterol consumption through the GPAT2/SULT2A1 axis.Science China. Life sciences · 2026Article
- The master molecule that built biology: How water shaped the chemistry of life.Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society · 2026Review
- Hydration-Mediated Energy Landscapes Govern Rotational Flexibility in Membrane-Bound Annexin V Assemblies.Nano letters · 2026Article
- From Upconversion Nanoparticles to Proteins: Probing Hydration-Water Density Fluctuations by Luminescence Thermometry.Accounts of chemical research · 2026Article
- Direct evidence of acid-driven protein desolvation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Single-engineered-residue solvation perturbations regulate global protein architecture and function.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Thermodynamic Data Remain a Hot Tip for Decoding Binding Affinity and Water Impact on Protein-Ligand Complex Formation to Assist Lead Optimization.Journal of medicinal chemistry · 2026Review
- Nutrition Research in Aging Dogs and Cats: What We Know and What We Need to Do.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Water Molecule(s) Inside the Selectivity Filter of Aquaporin 1: A DFT Study.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- LiqMat: Liquidity-Enabled Matters for Adaptive Electronics.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2026Article
- Water: The Essential Liquid in Biophysics : From the Scrutiny of the Complex Nature of its Molecular Interactions to the Hydration Properties of Nanomaterials, Proteins and Membranes, and the Fingerprints of Hydrophobicity.Sub-cellular biochemistry · 2026Review
- Understanding Isotope Substitution Effects in Water Using the Potential Energy Landscape Formalism for Quantum Liquids.Journal of chemical theory and computation · 2025Article
- Exploring Water Beyond the Solvent: Insights into Density Fluctuations and EGFP Unfolding via Luminescence Thermometry.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2025Article
71 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Szent-Győrgi called water the "matrix of life" and claimed that there was no life without it. This statement is true, as far as we know, on our planet, but it is not clear whether it must hold throughout the cosmos. To evaluate that question requires a close consideration of the many varied and subtle roles that water plays in living cells-a consideration that must be free of both an assumed essentialism that gives water an almost mystical life-giving agency and a traditional tendency to see it as a merely passive solvent. Water is a participant in the "life of the cell," and here I describe some of the features of that active agency. Water's value for molecular biology comes from both the structural and dynamic characteristics of its status as a complex, structured liquid as well as its nature as a polar, protic, and amphoteric reagent. Any discussion of water as life's matrix must, however, begin with an acknowledgment that our understanding of it as both a liquid and a solvent is still incomplete.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.