Crowding shifts G6PD forms

This proposed hypothesis asks whether blood-cell descendants could keep killing microbes quickly while causing less chronic inflammatory damage. It centres on molecular crowding, the space inside a cell occupied by large molecules, which may shift glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD), an enzyme that helps supply cellular reducing power, between more and less active forms. The prediction is specific: reversible crowding changes should alter G6PD forms, reducing-power production and early microbial killing before transcription, the copying of DNA instructions into RNA, changes. Testing would match osmolarity, acidity and viscosity, then ask whether a reconstructed reaction reproduces the enzyme-form shift. That pattern would support crowding as one contributor while leaving room for rival mechanisms.