Delta G New therapies from understanding ageing

Why 'Delta G'? <Archive>

Delta G's initial programmes, in CFS and cancer, are about how the body handles energy.

If a chemical reaction occurs, it happens because the overall energy of the reactants decreases as the reaction proceeds. This does not just mean heat, however: entropy (the reaction's molecular disorder) also plays a role. So dissolving ammonium nitrate in water results in a cold solution, because the entropy gained by dissolving makes up for the heat energy lost. Overall, energy is released.

This overall chemical energy is summed as a measure chemists call Gibbs Free Energy. 'Delta G', or , is the standard way of symbolising the change in Gibbs Free Energy that occurs as a reaction progresses. If is negative, then the balance of heat and entropy in the products is lower than in the starting material: the reaction could happen on its own, without any external energy source to drive it.

(... but it may happen so slowly that, as far as the experimenter is concerned, nothing happens at all.)

is central to the energy metabolism of living things. We take in high energy food and oxygen, and excrete low energy waste and CO2 - the difference is the energy we use to move, think, grow. A company concerned with how energy metabolism is tied up with disease must be intimately familiar with Delta G.

There is a 'corporate philosophy' angle too, if you like that sort of thinking. Delta G is a measure of the end energy you can get out of a process. If you were inside a barrel at the top of the stairs, your energy would be lower if you were out of the barrel and at the bottom of the stairs. But to achieve that, you must climb up the barrel's walls. To get energy, you need to put in energy. Getting anything done in the real world is like that - the end game seems worthwhile, but the effort getting there is too offputting.

We are not concerned about the effort. We look to whether it is worth doing in the endgame. If it is, count us in.

What the logo means.

There is a theory that by far the hardest part of starting a company is designing the logo, but for Delta G it suggested itself.

We can draw a graph of G, the Gibbs Free Energy, of a system of two molecules as they react. They start off far apart, with a certain energy. As they collide their energy goes up (as mentioned above - the barrel analogy). Then electrons move around, a new molecule is formed, and the energy drops to below its original level. If the Y axis is energy and the X axis is reaction coordinate (basically, how far the reaction has proceeded), the you get a curve that looks like this:

Hence the curve in the Delta G logo.