JohnJoe McFadden: Life on the Edge

JohnJoe McFadden from the University of Surrey talks about quantum mechanics in biology, including on avian navigation, enzyme action, photosynthesis, the sense of smell and mutation on March 29, 2019.

Quantum mechanics is the weirdest of sciences that allows particles to inhabit multiple locations in space and time at once, travel through classically-impenetrable barriers and possess spooky connections across vast regions of space. Yet the science is usually considered to be limited to the tiniest components of matter, such as protons or atoms. As systems get bigger, classical behaviors in which particles tend to be in one place or another, cannot penetrate impenetrable barriers and are not spookily connected, tends to dominate. However, several; decades ago, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrödinger, proposed in his book, ‘What is Life?’ published in 1944 that “a gene – or perhaps the whole chromosome fibre … [is] an aperiodic crystal [in which] every atom, and every group of atoms, plays an individual role … which has to be a masterpiece of highly differentiated order, safeguarded by the conjuring rod of quantum theory.’ He went on to claim that life was fundamentally quantum mechanical.
In this talk, I will examine Schrödinger’s claim from the perspective of modern quantum biology and molecular biology. I will discuss evidence for the quantum tunneling, quantum coherence and even quantum entanglement a wide range of biological phenomena such as avian navigation, enzyme action, photosynthesis, the sense of smell and mutation. I will also discuss advances in relation to that most fundamental question of biology: what is life? I will propose that what makes life unique is that it operates at the border between the quantum and classical realm.