Room temperature quantum transfer in biological systems

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140109/ncomms4012/full/ncomms4012.html

by jane_is_here • 11 years ago

54 21 11 years ago

nature.com

punnerud• 11 years ago

You should watch this before looking at the article: http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_al_khalili_how_quantum_biology_...

deepnet2• 11 years ago

Brilliant talk, more:

Jim Al-Khalili's Quantum Biology Conference, Videos of talks, IAS Surrey 2012

http://www.ias.surrey.ac.uk/workshops/quantumbiology/

BBC 4 is currently airing Jim's 4 part Science Documentary on Biology exploiting Quantum Weirdness.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04v85cj/the-secrets-of...

robbiep• 11 years ago

This is not brand new (not this particular research, but quantum systems in nature). It has long been known that some enzymatic reactions take advantage of quantum tunnelling to bridge reaction energies

- sources to come (mobile)

dekhn7• 11 years ago

I'm not sure I've seen reliable examples other than photosynthesis, and it hasn't been "a long time". Happy to inspect your sources.

Retric2• 11 years ago

Depends on what you mean by reliable examples, but it's been researched for well over 25 years. And point where something goes from probably to clear cut gets fuzzy.

(2009) "Quantum biology? Tunneling in enzymes" Over the past two decades the possibility of quantum tunneling of protons in enzymes has attracted considerable attention. (See for example a piece in Nature by Philip Ball (my favourite science writer) or the proceedings of a meeting at the Royal Society

The observed large kinetic isotope effects and their temperature dependence are inconsistent with semi-classical transition state theory,

http://condensedconcepts.blogspot.com/2009/07/quantum-biolog...

PS: This post ended with I align myself with the skeptics, but it's hardly a new idea.

theophrastus3• 11 years ago

I've been hearing quantum superposition and tunneling as a factor in enzyme mechanisms at least since I was a grad student (circa 1988ish). It was all the rage that perhaps it was the main enzymatic mechanism; but, it grew a little less popular as more 'conventional' explanations seemed to provide acceptable kinetic models. "sources"? too many to list, but just search for quantum effects and enzymes and set your last date to something like 1990ish, like here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=enzyme+mechanism+quantu...

mikexstudios• 11 years ago

Judith Klinman's work at Berkeley includes proton tunneling in proteins.

http://www.cchem.berkeley.edu/jukgrp/klinman_group/Research....

rubidium• 11 years ago

And the authors of the article acknowledge as much in the intro paragraph with multiple references, what's your point?

I like the authors opening point "Therefore, an important challenge for the growing field of quantum effects in biomolecules is to clearly identify which quantum features with no classical counterpart may manifest in these systems and how they may influence the process of interest."

What's going to be really fun to find is biological systems which naturally exploit efficient quantum processes (tunneling, coherence, or otherwise) to help cells do their thing. This is a nice step on that road.

castratikron• 11 years ago

I did some research on this top a few years ago. It's interesting that quantum behavior could exist in such a warm, wet and complex environment.

Room temperature quantum transfer in biological systems

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