Quantum Aspects of Life

About this book

This book presents the hotly debated question of whether quantum mechanics plays a non-trivial role in biology by setting out a distinct quantum biology agenda. The burgeoning fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology, quantum technology, and quantum information processing are now strongly converging. The acronym BINS, for Bio-Info-Nano-Systems, has been coined to describe the synergetic interface of these several disciplines.

The living cell is an information replicating and processing system that is replete with naturally-evolved nanomachines, which at some level require a quantum mechanical description. As quantum engineering and nanotechnology meet, increasing use will be made of biological structures, or hybrids of biological and fabricated systems, for producing novel devices for information storage and processing and other tasks.

Contents

Foreword (Sir R Penrose)

Emergence and Complexity:
A Quantum Origin of Life? (P C W Davies)
Quantum Mechanics and Emergence (S Lloyd)

Quantum Mechanisms in Biology:
Quantum Coherence and the Search for the First Replicator (J Al-Khalili & J McFadden)
Ultrafast Quantum Dynamics in Photosynthesis (A O Castro, F F Olsen, C F Lee & N F Johnson)
Modelling Quantum Decoherence in Biomolecules (J Bothma, J Gilmore & R H McKenzie)

The Biological Evidence:
Molecular Evolution: A Role for Quantum Mechanics in the Dynamics of Molecular Machines that Read and Write DNA (A Goel)
Memory Depends on the Cytoskeleton, but is it Quantum? (A Mershin & D V Nanopoulos)
Quantum Metabolism and Allometric Scaling Relations in Biology (L Demetrius)
Spectroscopy of the Genetic Code (J D Bashford & P D Jarvis)
Towards Understanding the Origin of Genetic Languages (A D Patel)

Artificial Quantum Life:
Can Arbitrary Quantum Systems Undergo Self-Replication? (A K Pati & S L Braunstein)
A Semi-Quantum Version of the Game of Life (A P Flitney & D Abbott)
Evolutionary Stability in Quantum Games (A Iqbal & T Cheon)
Quantum Transmemetic Intelligence (E W Piotrowski & J Sadkowski)

The Debate:
Dreams versus Reality: Plenary Debate Session on Quantum Computing (For Panel: C M Caves, D Lidar, H Brandt, A R Hamilton, Against Panel: D K Ferry, J Gea-Banacloche, S M Bezrukov, L B Kish, Debate Chair: C R Doering, Transcript Editor: D Abbott)
Plenary Debate: Quantum Effects in Biology: Trivial or Not? (For Panel: P C W Davies, S Hameroff, A Zeilinger, D Abbott, Against Panel: J Eisert, H M Wiseman, S M Bezrukov, H Frauenfelder, Debate Chair: J Gea-Banacloche, Transcript Editor: D Abbott)
Nontrivial Quantum Effects in Biology: A Skeptical Physicist's View (H Wiseman & J Eisert)
That's Life! - The Geometry of # Electron Clouds (S Hameroff)

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