Quantum Mechanics and Cancer Biology
The conjecture that quantum mechanics plays a key role in life dates back to the 1940s, and Erwin Schrödinger’s famous book “What is Life?” However, decades later, most scientists still assume that classical ball and stick models suffice in the realm of molecular biology. Recently there have been claims that quantum effects are essential in at least two biological processes – photosynthesis and bird navigation.
If non-trivial quantum effects such as superposition and entanglement can enhance the efficiency of some biological processes, then one might expect life to have evolved to exploit it. Unfortunately, biosystems are so complex that isolating clear quantum effects is challenging. More seriously, quantum effects are notoriously delicate and are easily disrupted by interaction with the environment, a process known as decoherence. The rate at which decoherence obliterates quantum effects depends on the strength of the coupling to the environment, as well as the temperature of the environment. On the face of it, the warm and wet conditions of biological organisms does not favor quantum coherence, and simple calculations predict that decoherence times are generally much shorter than biochemically relevant time scales. The credibility of quantum biology therefore hinges on the extent to which decoherence evasion might be possible in real biological systems.
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Participants
Paul Davies
Arizona State University
Sandu Popescu
University of Bristol
Jeff Tollaksen
Chapman University
Vlatko Vedral
University of Oxford
Robert Austin
Princeton University
Derek Abbott
University of Adelaide
Stuart Hameroff
University of Arizona
Yakir Aharonov
Tel aviv University
Johnjoe McFadden
University of Surrey
Alipasha Vaziri
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Jack Tuszynski
University of Alberta
Gerard Milburn
University of Queensland
Marlan Scully
Texas A & M University
Libby Heaney
University of Oxford
Elisabeth Reiper
National University of Singapore
Stuart Lindsay
Arizona State University
Don Coffey
Johns Hopkins
Hans Briegel
University of Innsbruck
Ao Ping
University of Washington
