Water activity, a W , does play a pivotal role in the physiology of living organisms, may these be microbes, animals or vegetables, and the stability of products obtained from them. The main reason for such ubiquitous effect is the direct involvement of water in practically every process that can occur in biological systems, e.g., transitions, chemical and biochemical reactions, diffusion, percolation, etc. Water indeed wets most of the surfaces and hydrates or solvates many chemical compounds, and, because of its large molecular mobility, can be displaced among the various compartments or phases that are normally present in biological systems, crossing interfaces, membranes and other layered supra-molecular structures under the effect of a single driving force: the gradient of its chemical potential, μ W , which is related to a W through the expression,where " * " stands for pure compound and R and T are the gas constant and the absolute temperature, respectively. Even hydrophobic media or compounds have to comply with the presence of water, modifying their own structure or conformation, and affecting the structure of the surrounding water phase: a change that was dubbed hydrophobic effect [Privalov & Gill, 1989].* Corresponding author: E-mail: alberto.schiraldi@unimi.it (Prof. A. Schiraldi)Aqueous solutions allow an easy evaluation of a W from the osmotic pressure, π, which can be determined experimentally in conditions of constant temperature, as π is directly related to a W :where V w is the molar volume of pure water (18 10 -6 m 3 /mol at room temperature).Unfortunately, such an approach is not feasible for most food and biological systems. One is therefore obliged to take advantage of the fact that a W is related to the fugacity of water, f W , which, in turn, may be approximated with the relevant partial pressure, p W , (since this is suffi ciently small):where RH stands for relative humidity. Through a measure of p W , one may therefore attain a W , which, because of the expression (3), coincides with RH (a part form a factor 10 -2 ). For a review of the traditional methods used to determine water activity the reader is addressed to reference Barbosa-Cànovas et al. [2007], while a new approach, namely, the Knudsen thermo-gravimetry [Schiraldi & Fessas, 2003], is described in a dedicate section of this paper.
Thermodynamics of aqueous solutionsThe Gibbs-Duhem expression allows evaluation of the thermodynamic activity of the solute, say glucose, a G ,
Water Activity in Biological Systems -A Review
Alberto Schiraldi*, Dimitrios Fessas, Marco Signorelli
DISTAM, University of Milan, Via Celoria 2, 20133 Milan, ItalyKey words: water activity, thermodynamics of aqueous solutions, bio-molecules Water deserves a major attention by researchers dealing with biological systems and related materials, like food, since it is ubiquitous and can be used like a "native" probe to garner information about the hosting system, provided it may be freely displaced across. Its thermodynamic potential, namely, the water activity,...