Quantum mechanics in biology
I really love Quantum mechanics, because it led to thinking in a more fundamental ways, I usually find some correspondence of QM in my daily life, like High uncertainty in people mood, Some transformation applied by some friends as the operator does with Quantum state and much more. But I am quite fascinated when I find some rather technical behaviour of Quantum mechanics in my daily life experiences as Quantum behaviours of fields and particles are very delicate, they are usually get fed away in this noisy classical world.
Green plants, Some bacteria, and tree uses sunlight and carbon dioxide turn them into Energy, If one look this in quite an arrogant way this all goes quite simple but if one quite think about it, The fast and smooth transport phenomena of electron through photosynthesis mechanism is quite weird--Because classical mechanics state that electron must have to battle with resistance but it don't do so. Through a research, it was found that the Quantum effects are behind this phenomena. In Quantum mechanics the ability to simultaneously exist in many places with different probabilities_ Quantum superposition-helps electron to cover simultaneously many routes, and by this way it will choose the shortest way ( This is easy if you try a little to make intuition of it, imagine something like a wave inside of the water as electron), and probably I guess entanglement might also behind it, as a distant switch( In a kind of making things too fast, before attacking with noise).
Have you ever wondered how bird exactly know where is the place they really want to go? Yeah, our intuition tells us that as long is a destination is quite small, they reach their by smell and by hearing the sound. But what about European robin? who have to travel thousand of miles, just imagine how much change even a slight deviation can make? It seems that these birds must have something like Jack sparrow's compass( Incase if you haven't watched the movie or probably the whole series, His compass exactly show the direction of what he wants), through years of research it is found that there is something similar in birds, Magnetoreception, (The ability of animals to navigate using the inclination of magnetic field of the earth) which is possibly explained by the radical-pair mechanism,(radical is a excitable lone electron) a well-established concept in spin chemistry. The molecule behind this is, cryptochrome(often called as magnetic molecule), a Flavoprotein, found in the eye of European Robin, is the only known molecule to form photo-induced radical pairs in animal, its function is photo-induction when exposed to the blue light, which excites an electron in chromophore (the region in which the energy difference between two molecules falls within the visible spectrum), in addition the excited electron is entangled with another electron, so it is in simultaneously in both triplet and singlet state.In the lab, it is shown that the radical-pair mechanism can catalyze the formation of chemical products(as long as the inclination of the magnetic field with respect to the spin of the electron is same) which gives the idea to the bird where they are going,(plus the DNA of ancestor is also responsible for this) and when exposed to radio wave with the oscillating magnetic field, they can't navigate their path. But the experiment of verification that whether the entanglement is necessary for this process is necessary or not is yet to be done.
There are other approaches to explain the biological phenomenon by quantum mechanics like olfaction, vision and even DNA mutation.
We usually ignore the explanation of classical phenomena by Quantum physics, but this quantum world might be more than we think, remember the quote of Niel Bohr, "If quantum physics hasn't shocked, it means you haven't understood it yet".Our Universe is quite amazing with different mysteries at the different level.
Recently I read a paper on the possible explanation of how Phosphorus nuclear spin' angular momenta can help it to make it more coherent and it can serve as a "Neural qubit", and how phosphate can be used as a qubit transporter, In this paper Author also explained that how entanglement can survive in our hot and wet climate of our brain(So even If you are little interested in Quantum mechanics, I would recommend you to read, and He hasn't used any mathematics) Here is a small infographia of his
paper,
Although it is not the paper first paper of this approach, there are several other works on it, another work is by Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, in which the main role is of objective reduction of wave-function collapse.
There are other problems in Biology which can't be explained by using classical science, that's why One seek Quantum phenomena to explain it, another one is of Photosynthesis.If one look for the explanation of photosynthesis in the high school textbook it is quite naive.Photosynthesis-Synthesis of food with the help of photon.A photon after travelling millions of kilometres from the sun to earth collides with leaf, this energy boost kicks the electron of the leaf which further go with energy currency leading to a further process of photosynthesis.
Green plants, Some bacteria, and tree uses sunlight and carbon dioxide turn them into Energy, If one look this in quite an arrogant way this all goes quite simple but if one quite think about it, The fast and smooth transport phenomena of electron through photosynthesis mechanism is quite weird--Because classical mechanics state that electron must have to battle with resistance but it don't do so. Through a research, it was found that the Quantum effects are behind this phenomena. In Quantum mechanics the ability to simultaneously exist in many places with different probabilities_ Quantum superposition-helps electron to cover simultaneously many routes, and by this way it will choose the shortest way ( This is easy if you try a little to make intuition of it, imagine something like a wave inside of the water as electron), and probably I guess entanglement might also behind it, as a distant switch( In a kind of making things too fast, before attacking with noise).
Have you ever wondered how bird exactly know where is the place they really want to go? Yeah, our intuition tells us that as long is a destination is quite small, they reach their by smell and by hearing the sound. But what about European robin? who have to travel thousand of miles, just imagine how much change even a slight deviation can make? It seems that these birds must have something like Jack sparrow's compass( Incase if you haven't watched the movie or probably the whole series, His compass exactly show the direction of what he wants), through years of research it is found that there is something similar in birds, Magnetoreception, (The ability of animals to navigate using the inclination of magnetic field of the earth) which is possibly explained by the radical-pair mechanism,(radical is a excitable lone electron) a well-established concept in spin chemistry. The molecule behind this is, cryptochrome(often called as magnetic molecule), a Flavoprotein, found in the eye of European Robin, is the only known molecule to form photo-induced radical pairs in animal, its function is photo-induction when exposed to the blue light, which excites an electron in chromophore (the region in which the energy difference between two molecules falls within the visible spectrum), in addition the excited electron is entangled with another electron, so it is in simultaneously in both triplet and singlet state.In the lab, it is shown that the radical-pair mechanism can catalyze the formation of chemical products(as long as the inclination of the magnetic field with respect to the spin of the electron is same) which gives the idea to the bird where they are going,(plus the DNA of ancestor is also responsible for this) and when exposed to radio wave with the oscillating magnetic field, they can't navigate their path. But the experiment of verification that whether the entanglement is necessary for this process is necessary or not is yet to be done.
There are other approaches to explain the biological phenomenon by quantum mechanics like olfaction, vision and even DNA mutation.
We usually ignore the explanation of classical phenomena by Quantum physics, but this quantum world might be more than we think, remember the quote of Niel Bohr, "If quantum physics hasn't shocked, it means you haven't understood it yet".Our Universe is quite amazing with different mysteries at the different level.
If you’d like to learn more about the field of quantum biology, check out this TED Talk by nuclear physicst Jim Al-Khalili, this video featuring a lecture by science writer Philip Ball, or one of the following books: Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology, What is Life?, or The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics
Thanks!
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