Bioenergetics

Davor Juretić is Professor Emeritus and a scientific adviser at the Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences in Split, Croatia. His initial education in theoretical physics led to biophysics, bioinformatics, and bioenergetics training in the USA. He established the Biophysics Ph.D. Program at the University of Split. His publications are from the research fields of peptide antibiotics, predictions of membrane buried protein helical segments, and applications of the maximum entropy production principle in physics and biology.

1. Mitchell’s Chemiosmotic Theory: The Background 2. Membrane Bioenergetics in a Nutshell 3. Irreversible Thermodynamics and Coupled Biochemical Reactions 4. What is Life? 5. Some Answers to Schrödinger’s Questions 6. Protonmotive Force 7. Membrane Proteins 8. The Maximum Entropy Production: Applications in the Bioenergetics of Bacterial Photosynthesis 9. Coupling Thermodynamics with Biological Evolution through Bioenergetics 10. Perfect Enzymes, According to Biochemists 11. ATP Synthase Molecular Motor 12. Bacteriorhodopsin: Light-harvesting Movie Star 13. The Protonmotive Force in Geochemistry and the Origin Question: Is the Origin of Bioenergetics Connected with the Origin of Life? 14. Integrating Glycolysis with Oxidative Phosphorylation by Hexokinases 15. Bioenergetics of the Brain, Aging, and Cancer Cells as Bridged by α-synuclein 16. Retrospections, Contrasting Viewpoints, Incentives, Challenges, Prospects, and Conclusions