Ricerc@Sapienza

It is common to entities having sizes in the nano/micro-scale range be that, real or bio-intended systems, to undergo the action of many different forces, imparting them colloid stability. Ubiquitary electrostatic contributions, sometimes dominant, may overlap with steric stabilization ones; their combination effectively takes place in most cases. The two effects are jointly responsible, for instance, for the control of many phenomena such as: adhesion onto cells of alien agents, cellular separation during morpho-functional evolution, uptake of exogenous materials into cells and tissues.

Plants are open, irreversible and non-equilibrium systems that live via mass- and energy exchanges with the environment, and therefore, are amenable to a thermodynamic treatment: in fact, they may be considered “energy converters” because their metabolism is nothing else than a controlled ability to transform energy from one form (solar) into another (chemical energy suitable to cell metabolism) and to activate and maintain reactions at cellular- and molecular level -promoting the plant growth.