It has been shown that when two biosystems compete with each other, their struggle can intensify, which leads to uncertainty of the final result. When describing these phenomena, instead of binary logic (there is no third), ternary logic appears. In the interval between “Yes” and “No” there is a distance, which is filled with an additional “Possible” option, implemented with different probability values depending on its position on the “Yes”–“No” scale. The same phenomenon is typical for quantum theory, which implements one of two events. Various languages used to describe such phenomena are considered.
Recent experimental research with marine algae points towards quantum entanglement at ambient temperature, with correlations between essential biological units separated by distances as long as 20 Angströms. The associated decoherence times, due to environmental influences, are found to be of order 400 fs. This prompted some authors to connect such findings with the possibility of some kind of quantum computation taking place in these biological entities: within the decoherence time scales, the cell "quantum calculates" the optimal "path" along which energy and signal would be transported more efficiently. Prompted by these experimental results, in this talk I remind the audience of a related topic proposed several years ago in connection with the possible rôle of quantum mechanics and/or field theory on dissipation-free energy transfer in microtubules (MT), which constitute fundamental cell substructures. The basic assumption was to view the cell MT as quantum electrodynamical cavities, providing sufficient isolation in vivo to enable the formation of electric-dipole quantum coherent solitonic states across the tubulin dimer walls. Crucial to this, were argued to be the electromagnetic interactions of the dipole moments of the tubulin dimers with the dipole quanta in the ordered water interiors of the MT, that play the rôle of quantum coherent cavity modes. Quantum entanglement between tubulin dimers was argued to be possible, provided there exists sufficient isolation from other environmental cell effects. The model was based on certain ferroelectric aspects of MT. Subsequent experiments in vitro could not confirm ferroelectricity at room temperatures, however they provided experimental measurements of the induced electric dipole moments of the MT under the influence of external electric fields. Nevertheless, this does not demonstrate that in vivo MT are not ferroelectric materials. More refined experiments should be done. In the talk I review the model and the associated experimental tests so far and discuss future directions, especially in view of the algae photo-experiments.
This paper is our attempt on the basis of physical theory to bring more clarification on the question ``What is life?'' formulated in the well-known book of Schr\"odinger in 1944. According to Schr\"odinger, the main distinguishing feature of biosystem's functioning is the ability to preserve its order structure or, in the mathematical terms, to prevent increasing of entropy. Since any biosystem is fundamentally open, it is natural to use open system's theory. However, Schr\"odinger's analysis shows that the classical theory is not able to adequately describe the order-stability in a biosystem. Schr\"odinger should also appeal to the ambiguous notion of negative entropy. We suggest to apply the quantum theory. As is well-known, behaviour of the quantum von Neumann entropy crucially differs from behaviour of the classical entropy. We consider a complex biosystem
S composed of many subsystems, say proteins, or cells, or neural networks in the brain, i.e.,
S=(Si). We study the following problem: if the composed system
S can preserve the ``global order'' in the situation of increase of local disorder and if
S can preserve its entropy while some of
Si increase their entropies We show that within quantum information theory the answer is positive. The significant role plays entanglement of the subsystems states. In the absence of entanglement, increasing of local disorder generates disorder increasing in the compound system
S (as in the classical regime).