Quantum Biology Q&A

um this is a first one say many World Series rubbish and certainly I'm in the picture of the enzyme you showed with the when you're explaining the tunneling of the atom what happens presumably that has a electron orbiting it if we use such terms what happens to that electron when there are when their atom tunnels across to the other part oh yeah no the the electrons have to shift as well because you know the pattern of bonding is shifted and so they shift around but the the general idea is that you know it's much easy for electrons to shift than for atomic nuclei to shift because they're much lighter and so you know the the general idea is that when a an atom shifts the electrons rearrange themselves almost instantaneously to accommodate that so so it doesn't so doesn't tunnel with it no it just no cuz right knows there's a sort of shift you're just in the pattern of the the electron clouds throughout the molecules don't forget what's up there shout your question I'll repeat it quantum theory of smell you're saying how the molecules of whatever it is was medics on a vibrating a certain wage way the electrical tunnel across the visual receptors just wondering what you meant by the molecules vibrate assuming the physical molecule is way breezy yes I am exactly that that they shake around molecules do that all the time I better repeat the question sorry yeah so the question was about the quantum effects in smell and how the whether whether the molecule vibrations help electron tunneling and the question was whether the molecules themselves were with physically vibrating yes yes and and that is exactly what I mean that they do all molecules are vibrating all the time you know that they they all have heat basically within them that is that is causing them to vibrate so so I do literally mean that and molecules vibrate in very particular ways so you know a simple molecule might sort of vibrate the water molecule for example you know either like that or the the atoms sort of shift one way and then the other like that they have particular so-called modes of vibration that are very specific to to to the molecule so there's a whole spectrum of vibrations of different frequencies corresponding to different movements of the atoms and the idea is that the is that somehow the receptor molecule is sensing that whole spectrum it's a bit like the spectrometers really that that chemists use to identify molecules from their vibrations so literally they are the the atoms are moving around I think there's another question from up on high yes so if you yes you mechanism of the avian comforts which relied on a tankman got the idea that it relies on the photon labs on the retina is there any evidence just the birds who are blind or and might be any competent works well so the question is whether in the avian compass which we think works with a photon landing on the retina and kick-starting this mechanism whether it ceases to work when if the bird is blind or its eyes are shut always yeah does anyone know about that you know about that Jim I I'm not an ornithologist well funny you should say that thought well first of all to say actually the bird certainly the European Robin migrates at night but there's enough light around it doesn't need very sort of bright light for you know single photons activated there's a group in in in Germany who who are carrying out research they they they capture these robins in mid migration but poor things and put them in these special cages and surround them with magnetic cores got Helmholtz coils which can simulate the effect of the Earth's magnetic field first of all they have them arranged to the north and south of these poles are exactly opposite to the north and south of the earth magnetic field so it cancels it out and the birds don't know which way to go and then they can mess with birds sense magnetic sense of direction by moving these calls around and then and what they do they have these birds sitting in these a little sort of funnels with well the different variations of this was called Emlyn funnels one bearish is one that I like best is this ink pad the bottom of these these chambers and as the birds flap their wings and try and escape and they sort of shuffle up the sides of these cones they leave ink marks with their feet on the sides and then the researchers can come the next day and see where there are most footprints to determine which direction the bird would really like to fly off in we're able to continue on its migratory journey and tells in the direction and insulted question they've designed these lovely little masks where they put over the Robins head that covers up its eyes to see if indeed that works and sure enough when when the Robin is is covered up there is no it loses this ability to sense the Earth's magnetic field I think that the effect was discovered by accident that's how they knew that it was something to do with activated by vision that the Robins were transported in in the dark somewhere by I think that the vil chose the husband and wife team who first carried out these experiments long before they thought anything quantum mechanical was going on so yes I've even seen some of these little masks we're not allowed to to go and disturb the Robins because they're stressed enough as it is but with this these masks are they put it in a cage and want to carry on their journey so having so humans prodding around as well but I've held at least helper on the mask obviously those that experiment redone with fruit flies because that that becomes a heart other level right so there you'd be amazed at what you can do with for I've been to Scott waddles lab and you know what you can do and make with fruit flies is it extraordinary that don't they electrocute their feet or something is that they - yes yes you know - give them to electric shocks yes go that way and this funnily enough but they learn quickly okay let's have some more questions oh my question oh sorry that one well well we're on that subject sure if I've understood it properly the the photon falling on the Robins retina causes there to be two or more free radicals one of which appears to be aligned with the Earth's magnetic field so it's using that as a reference the way I've understood it and then it responds to other influences so it can adjust its navigation how come there aren't so many other influences that it just doesn't fly around randomly some other influences from you mean just for design studies got this there are two or more free radicals as vote on hitting something in the retina one of which is aligned to the Earth's magnetic field we think you think somebody thinks I I don't think it's one ready to free radicals so basically two electrons that were part of a pair that one spins up once bitten spins down when that you could get these free radicals in the bonds break electron one electron can jump from one atom to another so these electrons remain entangled correlated connected with each other their fates are intertwined even though they're on different atoms and it's that pair of electrons that is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field or namely how the pair are spinning it in quantum mechanics we talk about whether electrons are in a spin triplet state or spin singlet state depending on where they're spinning the same direction or opposite directions and it's how much of the time they are spinning in the same direction compared with opposite direction that is affected by the orientation in the magnets I guess it's the the axis of the alignment of that it --hair of electrons that is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field not one free rein yeah I mean as I understand it it's not that you have a reference spin and some other one it's the real point is that there it should be a gradient in the magnetic field strength because you have this or background Earth's magnetic field but then you have the idea is you know some atoms are magnetic so you will have a gradient in the field and it's the different as jibs as the different populations of these different spin States a triplet and the singlet that is the kind of basis of the sensing mechanism and that that is sensitive to that gradient and if there are other other magnetic fields the nucleus that the electron feels the magnetic field of the atomic nucleus I mean that's a much more important effect the what's what's incredible I mean it was even I think it's the chemists Peter Atkins in the 70s really he said people who think magnetic fields can affect chemical reactions and charlatans you know this does not happen and and in particular the Earth's magnetic field which is so so weak you know it's a hundred times weaker than a fridge compass and a stick a fridge compass on my head I'm not going to feel it or go you know crazy the Earth's magnetic field is so weak and yet how is it these animals they do they don't with that that's not I think in any doubt that the animals use the Earth's magnetic field for navigation the question is how can that weak magnetic field influence over above the other forces that are controlling the behavior of these electrons such that they can discriminate their orientation in it and and we should say this is still not confirmed experimentally what is confirmed is the animals sense the Earth's magnetic field what we're trying to understand is what is the physical mechanism that allows them to do that essentially this is the only theory in town at the moment it may be wrong but someone come up with another explanation for how it works and then we can and we have to start thinking about ways of actually testing what theory is correct which is the way science works Jonjo and in the middle there and then the front there so this is my my co-author is going to ask Phil at very tricky questions yeah there par 5 thanks for a very very nice talk I want to return to the question which is kind of central to quantum biology as to whether it's really functional or or kind of accidental it kind of reminds me of the old adage of how controversial theories come about and get accepted or not first of all it's considered a theory is considered nonsense and then it's considered kind of well maybe it's possible and after that it's well it's inevitable it's obvious some some way in some way the quantum biology is a bit like that but it's a real problem that once you deal with individual molecules individual molecule protons and electrons inside biomolecules you just think that well quantum mechanics is kind of going to be inevitable can you think of what kind of experiment what kind of how you would nail it in quantum mechanics being really functional rather than inevitable yeah I mean that I think that is the the really hard question and it it's not easy to I mean I I'm certainly not going to come come up with this experiment of my head to answer that question except to say that that general question of whether what we see happening in a biochemical system is adaptive or not is always a hard thing to to determine and you know sometimes I think too readily there's the instinct to assume that it is to assume that everything we see in biological systems got that way because it was an adaptation and I think we're starting to see you know how complex that question sometimes is some people think for example and I think there are very good arguments to suggest this that a lot of the complexity in higher organisms isn't adaptive that it's something that happened almost as a byproduct of natural selection rather than because of it so you know I think that there's that evolutionary thinking and evolutionary biology has probably got more sophisticated in recent years from the early days when we had suddenly this explanation for why things were the way they were and everyone was happy to say well of course it was adaptive and now we realized that there's a lot that happens in biology that isn't but exactly how you determine whether it is or not is extremely difficult to figure out so you know that doesn't answer your question but it's to say it's a very hard question and one that we're gonna have to think very hard to answer I think to my to my mind I I'm almost not as interested in that issue I think we've had this discussion before whether if quantum effects take place our biology whether it's adaptive whether evolutionary forces have you know those organisms or mechanisms that could make use of quantum mechanics did so and therefore more successful or whether it was inevitable happened that's not as interesting to me as a physicist as much as the fact that non-trivial quantum mechanics is seen to take place in an unexpected system that you know the question then is is there something special about life is this something that life can do that inanimate matter of equal complexity can't do LS Schrodinger you know unless you freeze it down to near absolute zero is there something special about life what the clearly is but is that something special in sense due to quantum mechanics whether it's inevitable or whether it's it's it's evolved to make use of it I'm sort of not not that fast the fact that it's there is is exciting enough for me why he's a physicist yes okay fill thank you for a fascinating talk as a chemist I've got a question for you about enzymes no the enzyme you showed for quantum tunneling that was it was a redox enzyme I think it was lactate dehydrogenase has this phenomenon mainly been seen with these enzymes or has it been seen with other ones such as for example enzymes involved in methyl transfers yeah I you know I prayed I can't that's a good question I can't answer it I can't remember the you know all the details of which enzymes have been looked at so I mean teach you know can you remember which I mean it started a group in Berkeley was doing the work mostly in the 80s but now we've got people desert there's a chap called Nigel Scruton in Manchester who's doing a lot of work on enzymes and I think what is HAP what we're seeing now is that there are more and more enzymes that seem to promote proton transfer through through tunneling jhanjhar might have a list of topics I'm just going excuse me oh not yet if you come along too hard three of them event I am already and asked that question then you'll have you'll have a world expert on exactly that point and also about photic photosynthetic systems when you think about it that arrangement is the perfect nano machine in nature when you think about it so it's obvious so even I think the best things we can are not that good yet yeah that note we have no model for comparing a no sort of synthetic model I am pairing it with well although chemists are trying of course to do this to were to develop artificial photosynthetic systems that could be tremendously valuable as higher energy harvesting yes and and producing hydrogen if we could make them so the question then becomes are they going to have to think about if if this is what what is happening in nature are they going to think about how to get quantum coherence in their systems in a world of research where when we apply for grants we seem to increasingly these days have to put in the relevance and applications and impact of the research I predict that those who want to do research in cancer biology will quite often be making use of the fact we need to understand whether quantum mechanics plays a role in photosynthesis because that will help us build more more efficient energy so that's what happens when you live in a world governed by failed lawyers and accountants some second-rate arts graduates quite okay so walk some more questions okay so there's one there and and one down here and then there okay I'll keep okay thank you great stuff and can take you back to the old factory I'm over here alright and take you back to the old factory stead of smell system great really interesting organic molecules have got loads of hydrogen atoms all over them I think one of diagrams you had deuterium on almost every hydrogen atom but we can label these molecules individually put deuterium in different places or indeed we've got tritium so it's being able to put these labels in different parts the molecule anything where helped us understand whether these theories you mentioned a right or not one of my sort of ah yeah well it I mean it should I mean the in the example I showed and you know it really had been deuterated to that extent and that was because I felt I won't click back to it but I showed two molecules one of them with these carbon deuterium bonds all over and the other with at the end there was a a carbon-nitrogen group a night trial is triple bonded there and it just so happens that those two bonds have a very similar vibrational frequency so you know that that was really the the idea there that was you know that that was why those two molecules seem to be to be triggering the same olfactory response in fruit flies so I give my understanding there is that it that as long as you have a carbon deuterium vibration then you know you should see some similarity in the way the the two molecules are sensed but I don't know I mean it may be that they have done experiments where they've had different degrees of due duration I'm really not sure but I suppose if you're only worrying about whether you have a carbon deuterium vibration you know of some sort in the molecule then maybe that you know that's that's not crucial yes effective temperature on quantum so you were saying before sort of like the way that quantum computers function they need to be cool to very low temperatures a few degrees above zero okay but then you were saying the effect in quantum biology obviously biological processes and chemical processes happen at higher temperatures so I was just wondering what sort of the effect of temperature when we conduct experiments we have to cool them down to very low temperatures so I just wondered how that sort of affects it is the cooler temperatures to slow it down so that we can observe it more or do they simply not work because in a quantum computer would they not work it sort of higher temperatures I mean this is the weird thing about the whole idea of quantum biology isn't it that we are used to the idea of quick physicists are used to the idea that you're only going to see quantum effects at these very low temperatures where the disturbance that you're getting from all the jiggling around of the environment has you know largely been has largely gone away and all sorts of quantum effects you know only make themselves seen in those situations it's why superconductivity which is a quantum effect only seems to appear at very low temperatures and so that's the mystery why it is if it is the case that that you see the things like quantum coherence at every day temperatures in living systems how can that be how has you know biology arrange things that way that you know that that's the question that's the mystery why mean what do you think well it force about how that is possible yeah I mean I said that the back of the envelope calculations suggest that that's why physicists were so shocked that you could see some princess in photosynthesis this quantum coherence lasting for biological times so how can it be we predict according to the calculations that the system dukkha here is the quantum weirdness leaks away within femtoseconds 10 to the minus 15 of a second and here you've got this thing lasting for millions of times longer the current think is that those that the temperature another way of saying temperature is say how much noise or how many how much vibrations there are avoiding at the molecules that the big biomolecules the bonds between them the water molecules because inside the cell is basically liquid there's all this jiggling and lots of motion that we can call temperature that noise that should be killing the delicate quantum effects it's there are there's a group in all university this big research group led by a chap called martin plenty oh who suggests that actually that noise the temperature vibrations is at precisely the right frequency to resonate with things like quantum tunneling and so on and coherence so actually it uses it to its advantage to maintain quantum effects for even longer which are then comes back to this question of well how come you know is is therefore this something that somehow life has selected had has hit upon and made use of if it's inevitable can we see a similar sort of thing in in other systems can we set it up in our lab and i think it's simply too early to say we're seeing these papers appearing in you know the top journals this is not you know cranky sort of people on the on the outside of mainstream science he's a papers published in nature and science the top journals where they're they're trying to get to with how how this can happen in biology despite these high temperatures and I think is simply too early to know exactly what the right answer is thank you yes thank you thanks very much for a really interesting evening gentlemen look forward to the next two events I just like to make a very pretty common to the gentlemen over there who mate so are during credulous question about vibrating molecules and stuff like that I did my physics over 50 years ago I remember a big chunk of it was on molecular spectra which was all about vibrating molecules so this these vibrating molecules are being well understood for a very long time now my question actually to you gentlemen is this where do you think the first Nobel Prize is going to come in quantum biology and and would it be in physics or would it be in biology it'll be a chemistry I said lovely thing about for the budget the quantum physicists tried out of their physics test you know in all arrogance the same way that you know born Schrodinger this oh you've got some problem in biology apparently you know we're very clever we'll sort out and the barge is saying no way we need your nonsense you come to visit and what so we don't need anything and you know and they're arguing and the chemists say excuse me we've been doing this thing for years you know without our spectroscopy and so on and it seems the chemists do understand these problems a lot of the systems that we now try learning bar in the biochemistry actually are being done and looked at had been looked at by chemists for many years so I suspect it will be the chemists who who may get their Nobel Prize first before the physicists yeah I think yeah I agree entirely if it happens at all then that's where that's where it will happen if the chemical our technical problems and you know that a great deal of quantum related research is chemical that people have one chemical chemistry Nobel Prizes for work in quantum chemistry for understanding quantum theory of bonding I've mentioned aerial warshall whose Nobel laureate for his yeah in chemistry for his work on how enzymes behave it wasn't actually for looking at tunneling although he's done that as well so you know absolutely I think understanding the systems at the molecular level is is really chemistry chemists chemists are getting their prize for working on proteins and things like this but I think it just shows how broad chemistry is actually okay time for a couple more questions and this is quite a simple question but and is tunneling passive what does it use energy and if so how does it gather it get it yeah yeah well it doesn't tunneling doesn't need energy no I mean the particle if if it's able to get from one side of an energy barrier to another the whole point of tunneling is that it doesn't need sufficient energy to hop over the barrier it leaks through without requiring any additional energy that's that's what makes it so strange and non classic non classical yeah I mean tunneling uses probability I suppose you could say it exploits the fact that this is you know that this is how we have to describe the quantum world according to simply the probability of things being a different places that's all you need so okay to me it will pop up here so two questions at the top yes one there and then one there I'm afraid and then I'm off doing free we do have to talking as an experimentalist you've been talking about birds and you've been talking about fruit flies how about bees small for you a bee finds its source of nectar presumably began by magnetic fields it comes back to the Beehive on a honeycomb and transmits that information to all the bees in the colony if you turn that beehive upside down there's a big ol other way if you change the magnetic field on the honeycomb would it go the other way and it seems to transfer the information to the whole hive of the bees without all those bees watching it going up and down that the honeycomb is is there a future for a only very mental beehive to see some of these series and it might be much easier than your great experiment with the Robinson clones and things entangled bees into what I said a bees do align the honey care they can sense magnetic fields like Jim says and they do align the comb to magnetic field so you knows that much certainly is known I mean how they transmit the information to the rest of the community as far as I understand it they do these wonderful waggle dances to do that I don't know how much is known about what the information that they're conveying is there but somehow you know they have that that system so they certainly don't need entangled brains to know get that information across we're nice to think that there are other quantum phenomena in nature but I don't think anyone would go as far as to say that anything that's weird and wonderful in the animal kingdom we can ascribe to quantum mechanics that that will that will be one step too far yes so I think this has to be our final question you said in Xero's there's an intermediate the question quantum computing rather than simply having ones and zeros you mentioned in an intermediate state what did you mean well not exactly an intermediate state I mean a different state but you know if you think of a classical bit say a magnetic bit that can be oriented one way or the other it can be a one or it can be a zero whereas a quantum system can be in both of those states at the same time and it can be in different mixtures of those states to different degrees at the same time so you have the crude way of thinking about it is a crude way is that you just have more states available for quantum bits than you do for classical bits and so you can do more you can do more computation and that is a crude way of saying it because it's a sort of little admitted I think sometimes fact about quantum computing that although there are clear theories that show that you can get faster computation using these quantum bits it still isn't clear quite why that so and in fact it's not even clear that there is a single explanation for where that so-called quantum speed-up comes from and some people have argued that it's not really about the fact that you have all these super positions in different states and you're doing lots of parallel processing although I should say that David Deutsch who started the whole idea of quantum computing suggests that in effect what you're doing you're using these many worlds you're doing just you have a different computer in each world and it's doing all the computation together but there are some people now who are saying it's actually a different quantum property a more complex quantum property that that is responsible for the speed-up at least in some of these cases so all I really want to say is that although it's kind of vaguely clear why quantum computation might in some systems in some situations be faster it's really still not understood quite why that should be so do you agree yeah no absolutely well and we do have to wrap up there I'm afraid thank you all very much for coming when I make my programs for BBC four I'm told by the commissioning editors that BBC for audiences I'm sure you are all a part of don't necessarily have to understand everything about a documentary about quantum physics they want to be made to feel clever I think it's in the nicest possible way I think we can all go away this evening in the knowledge that Philip Ball has made us feel that little bit more clever let's all thank him once again

Channel: The Royal Institution

Views: 34,354

Rating: 4.9137931 out of 5

Keywords: Quantum Biology, Quantum Mechanics (Field Of Study), Biology (Media Genre), Physics (Field Of Study), Entanglement, Philip Ball, Jim Al-Khalili (Academic), Science (TV Genre), Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (TV Program), Royal Institution, Ri, Royal Institute, Education, Science, q&a

Id: AlN6zVrUewM

Length: 31min 35sec (1895 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 18 2015