Table Of Content

Life on the Edge The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili CROWN PUBLISHERS New York © 2014 Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. www.crownpublishing.com CROWN is a registered trademark and the Crown colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain as Life on the Edge by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., in 2014. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. ISBN 9780307986818 eBook ISBN 9780307986832 Illustrations by HL Studios Cover design by Na Kim v3.1 For Penny and Ollie Julie, David and Kate Contents About the Authors i Acknowledgments ii 1 Introduction 1 A hidden spooky reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Quantum biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Why should we be excited about quantum biology? . . . . . . . . 19 2 What is life? 24 The “life force” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Triumph of the machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 A molecular billiard table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Life as chaos? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Peering deeper into life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Genes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Life’s curious grin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 The quantum revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Schrödinger’s wave function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 The early quantum biologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Order all the way down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 The estrangement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 3 The engines of life 60 Enzymes: between the quick and the dead . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Why we need enzymes and how tadpoles lose their tails . . . . . 66 Changing the landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Jiggling and wiggling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Does transition state theory explain it all? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Pushing electrons around . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Quantum tunneling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Quantum tunneling of electrons in biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Moving protons around . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 The kinetic isotope effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 So does this establish the quantum in quantum biology? . . . . . 99 4 The quantum beat 103 The central mystery of quantum mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Quantum measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Voyage to the center of photosynthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 The quantum beat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 5 Finding Nemo’s home 138 The physical reality of odors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Unlocking the odor key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Smelling with a quantum nose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Battle of the noses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Physicists take a sniff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 6 The butterfly, the fruit fly and the quantum robin 172 The avian compass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Quantum spin and spooky action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 A radical sense of direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 7 Quantum genes 204 Fidelity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 Infidelity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 The giraffe, the bean and the fruit fly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 Coding with protons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Quantum jumping genes? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 8 Mind 240 How odd is consciousness? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 The mechanics of thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 How mind moves matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Computing with qubits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 Computing with microtubules? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Quantum ion channels? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 9 How life began 276 The gunk problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 From gunk to cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 The RNA world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 So, can quantum mechanics help? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 What did the first self-replicator look like? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 10 Quantum biology: life on the edge of a storm 300 Good, good, good, good vibrations (bop bop) . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Reflections on the motive force of life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 Life on the quantum edge of a classical storm . . . . . . . . . . . 317 Can we exploit quantum biology to make new living technology? 323 Building life from the bottom up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 Launching the primordial quantum protocell . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 Epilogue: quantum life 337 About the Authors Johnjoe McFadden is a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surreyandistheeditorofleadingtextbooksonbothmolecularbiologyand systemsbiologyoftuberculosis. Foroveradecade,hehasspecializedinex- amining tuberculosis and meningitis, inventing the first successful molecu- lartestforthelatterandwinningtheRoyalSocietyWolfsonResearchMerit Awardforhisfindings. HeistheauthorofQuantumEvolutionandco-editor of Human Nature: Fact and Fiction, and writes for the Guardian on topics including GM crops, psychedelic drugs and quantum mechanics. Jim Al-Khalili, OBE, is an academic, author and broadcaster. He is a leading theoretical physicist based at the University of Surrey, where he teaches and carries out research in quantum mechanics. He has written a number of popular-science books, including Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science, Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed and Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Science. He has presented several television and radiodocumentaries, includingtheBAFTA-nominatedChemistry: AVolatile History and The Secret Life of Chaos. i Acknowledgments THIS BOOK has been three years in the writing, although the authors have collaborated on research in this exciting new field, which brings quantum physics, biochemistry and biology together, for almost two decades. But when it comes to such a cross-disciplinary area of science as quantum biology, it is impossible ever to become expert enough to explain in sufficient depth and with sufficient confidence all the science that is needed to paint the full picture—particularly when it comes to writing the first ever book on the subject for a lay audience. It is certainly true that neither of the authors could have written this book alone, since we each bring our own expertise from the worlds of physicsandbiology,respectively,tothetable. Itiseventruerthatwewould not have been able to produce a book that we are both immensely proud of without the help and advice of many people, most of whom are world leaders in their areas of research. We are grateful to Paul Davies for many fruitful discussions he has had withbothofusoverthepastfifteenyearsaboutquantummechanicsandits potential relevance in biology. We are also indebted to the many physicists, chemistsandbiologistsnowmakinggreatstridesinthisnewfieldwhoseex- pertiseanddeepknowledgeoftheirspecialistareaswedidnot,anddonot, have. In particular, we are indebted to Jennifer Brookes, Gregory Engel, Adam Godbeer, Seth Lloyd, Alexandra Olaya-Castro, Martin Plenio, Sandu Popescu, Thorsten Ritz, Gregory Scholes, Nigel Scrutton, Paul Stevenson, Luca Turin and Vlatko Vedral. We also wish to thank Mirela Dumic, the coordinator of the University of Surrey’s Institute of Advanced Studies, who almost single-handedly put together our highly successful interna- ii Acknowledgments iii tional workshop, “Quantum Biology: Current Status and Opportunities,” at Surrey in 2012, which was jointly funded by the IAS, BBSRC (Biotech- nology and Biological Sciences Research Council) and MILES (Models and Mathematics in Life and Social Sciences) project. This workshop brought together many of the leading figures—this is still an emerging field and the number working in it is relatively small—currently involved in quantum biology research from around the world and helped us feel as though we were truly part of this exciting research community. Once the book was in draft form, we asked several of those colleagues listed above to read through it and give us their opinions. We are thus especially grateful to Martin Plenio, Jennifer Brookes, Alexandra Olaya- Castro,GregoryScholes,NigelScruttonandLucaTurin. Wewouldalsolike to thank Philip Ball, Pete Downes and Greg Knowles for reading through some or all of the final draft and providing so many insightful and useful comments that have improved the book tremendously. A big thank-you goes to our agent, Patrick Walsh, without whom the book would not have gotofftheground,andtoSallyGaminaraatRandomHouse,forherfaithin usandforbeingsoexcitedabouttheproject. Anevenbiggerthank-youhas to go to Patrick and to Carrie Plitt at Conville & Walsh, for their advice and suggestions about the book’s structure and format, and in helping to mold it into a final version that is light years away from its initial clunky state. We are also indebted to Gillian Somerscales for her editorial brilliance. Last, but by no means least, we wish to thank our families for their unstinting support, particularly during those periods when we were fac- ing self- and publisher-imposed deadlines, which meant putting all other commitments to one side and shutting ourselves away with our laptops. We have lost count of the evenings, weekends and family vacations during which quantum biology has had to come first. We hope the book has been worth it. For both for us, and for the new field of quantum biology, we hope that journey has only just begun. Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden, August 2014