What evidence is there for quantum effects in biological systems? What are the implications for life in general?

Today we’ve got the relatively new field of quantum biology to assess. For years the idea of quantum effects in biological cells was dismissed because live cells were ‘too warm and wet’ to host these sensitive quantum phenomena. But new research into quantum coherence in avian navigation, quantum tunnelling in DNA mutations, in enzymes, even in smell - has brought new interest and study to the field of Quantum Biology.

One biochemist, saw all this coming and wrote a book about it 20 years ago called, ‘Quantum Evolution’. He is none other that than Professor of Molecular Genetics at Surrey university, JohnJoe McFadden.

His mainstream research is in microbial genetics, particularly in developing new systems biology approaches to infectious diseases. He is a keen promoter of public understanding of science and has given many popular science talks on subjects as varied as evolution and GM food. He also writes popular science articles, particularly for the Guardian newspaper. His specialties are broad including: systems biology, microbiology, evolutionary genetics, infectious diseases, tuberculosis, meningitis, and bionanotechnology.

He’s written many books but in this episode we’ll be focussing on material from his newer books, ‘Life on the Edge: the coming age of Quantum Biology’ with physicist Jim Al-Khalili, and ‘Life is Simple: How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Unlocked the Universe’.

What we discuss:

00:00 Intro

04:30 ‘Too Warm and Wet’ Dismissing quantum consciousness in microtubules

08:40 Roger Penrose: Consciousness may be a field

14:28 The macro universe must be quantum in some way

17:30 Nobody understands the cut-off point between classical large and quantum small

20:20 Quantum coherence in Photosynthesis, enzymes, DNA mutations and avian navigation

23:00 Life ‘amplifies’ the dynamics of stuff going on at the quantum level a to classical level

49:30 University of Surrey ‘Quantum Biology’ PHD graduate program

54:30 Science is becoming more and more interdisciplinary

57:00 Biologists sometimes need to go to quantum mechanics to understand their phenomena

01:12:00 The brain is a receiver and a transmitter: Conscious Electromagnetic information theory

01:16:00 William of Occam’s ‘Razor’ explained

01:22:00 Any sufficiently advanced science would look like metaphysics

01:27:00 Simple models aren’t an ontological claim about the world being simple

01:28:30 Bayesian likelihood reasoning makes sharper predictions

References:

‘The Emperor’s New Mind’ Roger Penrose

Greg Engel, Quantum Coherence in Photosynthesis paper (2011)

Judith Klinman, Quantum Tunneling in Enzymes paper (2006)

Thorston Ritz, Avian navigation paper (2004)

Johnjoe McFadden, Consciousness: Matter or EMF paper  (2022)