>>12068049>>12067572My hunch is that he's lying to himself about the high-energy bonds not existing:
"The term 'high energy' with respect to these bonds can be misleading because the negative free energy change is not due directly to the breaking of the bonds themselves. The breaking of these bonds, like the breaking of most bonds, is endergonic and consumes energy rather than releasing it. The negative free energy change comes instead from the fact that the bonds formed after hydrolysis - or the phosphorylation of a residue by ATP - are lower in energy than the bonds present before hydrolysis. "
He probably read studies showing the negative free energy != the bond breaking, and....somehow distorted that into "energy is different", but the negative deltaG values have been known forever.
Anyways, the evidence overwhelmingly flies in his face and disproves his assertions. Using modern-day techniques, we have visualized the NA/K pump (cystal structure), we've measures a trillion times over the rate of NA/K flux and every time it comes out the same, we've calculated energy cost/requirement in total tissues and cells and know the density of the pumps (cool single-particle density estimation here), all the evidence agrees with all the other evidence.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29694368/I don't understand how in this day and age where we literally know the genomic location of the genes that make up the NA/K ATPase, we can synthesize and purify the full protein, we can make choice mutations in the ATP binding to prevent binding of ATP and the pump doesn't work, we can predict that drug X will block NA/K ATPase activity, show that its the case, AND we get crystal structures of the drug bound, that anyone can call themselves a scientist and say that NA/K pump doesn't exist or what have you.
