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ORIGIN OF LIFE. "Molecular organizations leading to the origin of the phenomenon of life might have been associated with the emergence of a quantum coherence embodied in a robust heat engine feeding on quantum decoherence. Evolutionary maintenance of a robust quantum heat engine, once appeared, can further be empowered by the build-up of temperature gradients of endogenous origin." https://lnkd.in/efSTqyA View in LinkedIn

BRITISH farm policies and the state of flooding. A compelling read. " "This flood was not only foretold – it was publicly subsidised http://gu.com/p/4fddb?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

RHODOPSIN. "The remarkably rapid and efficient photoactivated one-way reaction dynamics in rhodopsin is a result of the ultrafast coherent wave-packet dynamics that depends critically on the quantum mechanical positioning of the excited-state potential energy surfaces and the symmetries of the electronic states." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

"BIOLOGICAL PHOTORECEPTORS contain chromophores that absorb photons and then undergo rapid chemical transformation on their excited states, eventually leading to light-induced signal transduction. Owing to the quantum nature of electronically excited states and nuclear quantum coherences that often accompany excited-state molecular dynamics, quantum mechanics is required to describe these photoactivated dynamics in biological photoreceptors." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

ADAPTIVE MUTATION. "In 1999, the physicist Jim Al-Khalili and I suggested that proton tunnelling might account for one very peculiar kind of mutation – so-called adaptive mutation – which appears to occur more frequently when it provides an advantage. Our paper was entirely theoretical, but we are currently attempting to find experimental evidence for proton tunnelling in DNA." https://lnkd.in/eYXPebN View in LinkedIn

QUANTUM CORRECTION. "In enzyme catalysis, a large portion of the quantum improvement over the classical catalytic rates could be attributed to the zero-point energy that gives a quantum correction to the barrier height and the hydrogen tunnelling rates." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

QUANTUM ENZYMES. "Hydrogen tunnelling also plays an important role in a wide range of biological enzymatic catalytic reactions. Observations of strong intrinsic kinetic isotope effects in enzymatic reactions have clearly demonstrated nuclear quantum effects in enzymes." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

PERPLEXING PROTEIN TUNNELING. "It is remarkable that such long-distance electron transfer in biology occurs through quantum mechanical tunnelling, because electron tunnelling over such long distances would be impossible in vacuum." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn

CULTURE GAP: PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY. "Biology today is where physics was at the beginning of the twentieth century...It is faced with a lot of facts that need an explanation..."What has been all too rare in biology is the symbiosis between theory and experiment that is routine in physics." https://lnkd.in/eVFhtfq View in LinkedIn

"LONG-RANGE ELECTRON TRANSFER through proteins often show exponential distance dependence as well as weak temperature dependence, providing a strong indication that a single-step tunnelling mechanism is responsible for these biological processes." https://lnkd.in/eRUdQZj View in LinkedIn