Quantum Biology is Amazing

Today’s Biology Lesson.  … from the Quantum World.

To me this is all brand new.  Nothing like this was taught when I took biology class.

A. You know many birds migrate long distances each year.  What is not well understood is how.  But it is generally assumed they use the earth’s magnetic field – somehow.  This is now explained using modern physics, particularly quantum physics.  It is through the process of quantum entanglement, where two distant photons (light particles) are instantly entangled with each other no matter the distance between them.  Already observed only recently in the physics lab, it is now apparently so in the biology lab for a species of Robin, and the way the photons of light entangle depends on the magnetic field. And this is how the bird chooses its flight direction. BTW, a one-eyed robin could not migrate because it couldn’t get direction information.

B. You know smells, and you know not a lot of molecules are needed to stimulate a smell. Bears, for example, can smell game miles away.  Until recently, it was believed this was accomplished in the nose through a lock and key mechanism wherein the shape of the molecule would act as a key to “fit” into a particular smell lock receptor in the nose (and brain).  This is not so. It is now believed this happens because proteins in the molecule vibrate at certain frequencies and these resonate with receptors in the brain.  This makes smelling a lot like listening. And these vibrations are predicted by quantum mechanics.

C. You know tadpoles turn into frogs.  But they do it in just about six weeks.  This means the entire structure of the tadpole changes almost overnight.  The protein collagen, a very tough protein, must break down and reform into frogs legs and so on.  Biologically, this could take years, but with the quantum mechanical process of “quantum tunneling” the strong collagen bonds can be easily and quickly changed to weak bond which make the breakdown easy and therefore quick.

D.  In plants, light causes photosynthesis and this causes the plant to grow and follow its DNA mission to flower or fruit or leave or whatever it does.  The process seems simple. A photon of light strikes a cell in the plant, knocking an electron out of a molecule.  This electron must find its way to “reaction center” in the cell to create a reaction.  But how does that happen? It doesn’t know the way.  One way would be to just bounce about the cell until it finds the center.  But this is slow and costs that electron great energy leaving not enough to do anything.  The other way is by the quantum wave effect where the electron is present everywhere at the same time and can find the center almost instantly. (You see the electron is both a particle and a wave, not just a tiny billiard ball shuttling about.)

 More and more quantum effects have been noticed in life processes, and particularly in a new subject called quantum evolution which gives a convincing demonstration of how mutations can occur.  What a time to study biology!  The rules are all changing.  Great contributions are possible.