CONSTRUCTAL LAW AND ION TRANSFER IN NORMAL AND CANCER CELLS

All the living systems waste heat into environment. It is no more than the result of their internal irreversibility. The Constructal law analysis of the irreversibility related to this wasted heat represents a new useful approach to the study of the cells behaviour. This approach allows us to consider the living systems as black boxes and analyze only the inflows and outflows of energy and mass, and their changes in relation to any environmental modification. The consequence is the analysis of the effect of the ions transport through the membrane, and the related cell-environment pH changes, with consideration on the Krebs or Warburg cycle, used for energy conversion, by the normal and cancer cells respectively. Consequently, the entropy generation related to the pH changes can be obtained, and related to mitosis/apoptosis ratio, fundamental to evaluate the probability of evolution of cancer.