Draft #43

When cells lose water, many problems arise. Cellular membranes are made of a lipid bilayer that is extremely hydrophobic. This membrane requires the presence of water to stay together because the polarity surrounding the lipids keeps their organization favored by entropy and forces all the hydrophobic tails together. When water loss occurs, the cell membranes disintegrate, among other problems that arise. One mechanism in nature that exists to prevent this during periods of drought in plants. In order to prevent these effects, the plant cells produce a molecule that performs that same function that water was serving. These clever molecules are simple sugars that have hydrophilic properties and are able to keep cell membranes together and working correctly. These sugars include sucrose, raffinose, stachyose and trehalose. It has been found that these same sugars are able to prevent protein aggregation with water loss as well. These sugars can also be added in excess to cells to allow researchers to freeze down cells for later use over very long periods of time, for example 50 years.