Quantum Aspects of Life [Paperback]

Derek Abbott (Author, Editor), Paul C. w. Davies (Editor), Arun K. Pati (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1848162677 | ISBN-13: 978-1848162679 | Publication Date: September 12, 2008

This book presents the hotly debated question of whether quantum mechanics plays a non-trivial role in biology. In a timely way, it sets 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. An understanding of these systems at a quantum mechanical level will be indispensable.

Product Details

• Paperback: 468 pages
• Publisher: Imperial College Press (September 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1848162677
• ISBN-13: 978-1848162679
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #124,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Biophysics
  • #96 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Biology > Molecular Biology

Customer Reviews

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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A welcome volume on quantum biology, January 7, 2009

By 

Stephen Esser "steve_esser" (Villanova, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Quantum Aspects of Life (Paperback)

The papers in this collection address the question of whether quantum mechanics (QM) plays a non-trivial role in biology (the non-trivial aspects of QM being superposition, entanglement, tunneling, etc.)

The volume is very welcome, since the topic seems to demand more focus than it has received. Confirming a significant quantum role could have a huge impact - both on the practical pursuit of biology and the philosophical perspective we take on the nature of life and mind.

There has long been a good circumstantial case to be made that the remarkable nature of non-trivial QM effects may serve to help explain the remarkable capabilities of biological systems, but experimental confirmation has been elusive and molecular biology has experienced huge growth and success nonetheless. Also, skeptics point to the challenge to nature of maintaining quantum effects in the face of environmental decoherence. So, the field of quantum biology has been slow to develop.

While experimental confirmation of non-trivial QM effects in biology has indeed been elusive, it has not been absent: there was (to me) an exciting result published by Engel, et.al. in the journal Nature last year which showed the utilization of quantum coherence in photosynthesis. The timing of this result's publication was such that it either barely pre-dated or else post-dated the submission of papers to Quantum Aspects of Life. As I read the book, I was often thinking about how this result might change the debate as we move forward: it not only showed the utilization of QM in one of the core processes in biology, it also showed the engineering challenge (and attendant resource demands) which are involved in confirming the presence of such a phenomenon.

Here are a few highlights: The book begins with a nice foreword by Sir Roger Penrose, whose perspective will be familiar to those who have read his books. He thinks the human mind will demand a quantum-derived explanatory account. Chapter one, by Paul Davies, and Chapter three, by Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden both focus on the possible role QM may have played in the origin of life on earth. Davies explores a model of a quantum replicator as a precursor; both he and Al-Khalili/McFadden discuss the possibility of a quantum-coherent search algorithm which helped lead to an early replicator.

Models of how photosynthesis likely exploits coherence is the subject of Chapter 4 (with the Engel paper validating broadly the idea); the authors of Chapter 5 present models to help quantify the impact of environmental decoherence in biological contexts. A quantum role in DNA mutation and replication is a topic which is discussed in several chapters (6,9,10). The capabilities of artificial quantum systems are explored in chapters 11-14. To the extent QM systems are good at mimicking features of living things, this offers more circumstantial evidence.

One of my favorite parts of the book is the inclusion (as chapters 15 and 16) of the transcripts of two staged debates which took place at conferences: one is on the future of quantum computing (from 2003), and one specifically on the topic of whether life utilizes non-trivial quantum effects (2004). Both debates featured good insights and a good deal of wit. Howard Wiseman and Jens Eisert contribute a thoughtful paper (Ch. 17) explaining why they were on the skeptics' side of the second debate.

Stuart Hameroff gets the last word in the book, offering his positive proposals for how it all might work (Ch.18). He sees in the structure of cells, both cytoskeleton and protoplasm, features which could lead to a larger scale participatory quantum biology.

As a layperson, I'm not a good one to offer judgment on most of these ideas. We need more research in order to sort through and find out which quantum biological ideas are fanciful and which are on target. So, I second the editors of this volume in their hope that its publication will provoke further debate and help motivate experimental research into this fascinating subject.