Science Memes

11081 readers

2519 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

382

Wet Time (mander.xyz)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] modus 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

From what I understand, the water helps "penetrate" the cell walls of bacteria and deliver the lethal dose of alcohol. Take out more water and it's unable to penetrate and murder things as efficiently.

[–] roguetrick 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Alcohol and water are both polar and form hydrogen bonds, but of differing strength. You want those bonds to switch, which creates conformational changes and rips the structure of proteins apart. If you just replace all the bonds with alcohol you'll develop a new, although denatured, stable configuration which can keep the cell wall intact. Instead you want to keep developing new stresses on it until it breaks. Neither can really penetrate the phospholipid membrane of the cell because it's nonpolar, but those conformational changes create big holes where the surface proteins are.