Quantum view about metabolism

After the writing of the first version of the chapter discussing quantum view about metabolism for about decade ago several new ideas have emerged. Since 2007 the evidence that photosynthesis involves quantum coherence in electronic degrees of freedom in the cell scale has been accumulating: this discovery is in blatant conflict with the predictions of standard quantum theory but conforms nicely with one of the oldest TGD based proposal that living matter is high T_c electronic super-conductor and with the identification of dark matter as phases with large value of Planck constant.

Both the new ideas and the new experimental results motivated rewriting of the chapter. Below is a brief summary about the new ideas that have emerged during last years, and questions raised by them, and how they affect the quantum model of metabolism at the basic level. Especially interesting new result is a concrete and testable proposal for how living matter acts as a high T superconductor bound to have practical implications. This proposal allows also to understand the basic aspects of bio-chemistry (why the number of valence bonds per molecule is maximized). Also a unification of three different views about high living matter manages to be macroscopic quantum system emerges. This unification is only one example of amazing convergence of the basic ideas of TGD that has taken place during the last years.

1. Three different views about living matter as a macroscopic quantum system

There are three different views about how living system manages to be a macroscopic quantum system.

1. The first vision is based on various kinds of super-conductivities. Electronic super-conductivity is assigned with the cell membrane and plays a key role in the model of cell membrane as a Josephson junction. Furthermore, the effects of ELF em fields on vertebrate brain (see this) suggest that biologically important ions form macroscopic quantum states and cyclotron Bose-Einstein condensates of bosonic ions have been suggested. The TGD based view about atomic nuclei (see this) predicts exotic nuclei chemically equivalent with ordinary ones but being bosons rather than fermions. Also these exotic ions could also form cyclotron Bose-Einstein condensates. Large value of Planck constant would guarantee that cycloctron energies proportional to hbar are above thermal energy.

2. A more precise view about hierarchy of Planck constants as an implication of the enormous vacuum degeneracy of Kähler action has emerged (see this). According to this view non-standard values of Planck constant are only effective.

   As the idea about the hierarchy of Planck constants emerged, I proposed that favored values of Planck constant could comes are powers of 2¹¹. This was just a first guess inspired partially by the observation that the mass ratio of proton and electron is 940/.5= 1880 ∼ 2¹¹. I managed to find indications supporting this hierarchy and also this chapter contains traces of this idea. I became later skeptic but one could actually imagine a mechanism implying this kind of hierarchy. Dark protons with say r=hbar/hbar₀= 1836=4× 3³× × 17 would correspond to approximately same Compton length as ordinary electrons. It is natural to assign this value of hbar also to electrons and this gives Compton length 44.6 Angstroms not far from the p-adic length scale L(149)≈ 50 Angstroms assigned with the lipid layer of cell membrane. The condition that dark proton corresponds to this Compton length gives r= 1836²: the electron Compton length comes now 8.1 μm, which corresponds to cell size scale. One could continue the resulting hierarchy of Planck constants indefinitely.

3. The notion of negentropic entanglement making sense for rational and even algebraic entanglement probabilities has emerged as a possible characterizer of living matter emerged (see this). Quantum arithmetics allows to generalize the notion of rational so that p-adic real correspondence mediated by canonical identification is fixed uniquely and is both continuous and respects symmetries. One implication is an explanation for Shnoll effect , which could be important also in living matter.

This raises several questions.

1. How high T_c super conductivity based on dark electron pairs and negentropic entanglement relate?

2. Could it be that electron pairs in valence bonds are the carriers of negentropic entanglement and that they generate the magnetic flux tubes as parts of their magnetic bodies and in this manner space-time correlates for macroscopic quantum coherence? This makes sense only if the valence electron pairs in living matter have spin 1. The Cooper pairs of high T_c super-conductors are ineed known to have spin 1 (see this). If this view is correct, biological evolution would favor the maximization of covalent electron pairs and this indeed seems to be the case (carbohydrates, fundamental biomolecules, phosphates having as many as 8 valence bonds!) .

3. Why large hbar would make possible negentropic entanglement or even force it? Is there some purely number theoretic reason for this? For instance, could the p-adic prime p characterizing quantum arithmetics divide the integer n characterizing the Planck constant or could prime valued integers n be favored?

2. Genetic code and dark nucleon states

New realization of the genetic code in terms of dark proton sequences identified as dark nucleons was discovered (see this and this).

1. The states of dark proton are in natural one-one correspondence with DNA, RNA, tRNA, and amino-acids and vertebrate genetic code is realized in a natural manner. Dark nucleons realized DNA codons as entangled quark triplets. The effective chemical formula H_1.5O for water in atto-second time scale supports this view (see this). How the notion of dark nucleon relates to negentropic entanglement of electrons? Could dark electron pairs and dark nucleons correspond to the same value of Planck constant? Could both dark protons and dark electrons play a key role in metabolism.

2. The simplest guess is that DNA strands are accompanied by dark nuclei with one dark proton per DNA nucleotide. The resulting positive charged would stabilize the system by partially neutralizing the negative charge density due to the phosphorylation (2 negative charges per nucleotide). Dark proton sequences could be associated also with other important bio-polymers. If the spins of the dark protons are parallel the dipole magnetic fields give rise to flux tubes connecting the protons and one can assign to the large hbar protons a macroscopically quantum coherent phase.

3. The natural guess would be that dark nucleus realization of the genetic code induces the biological realization as evolution assigns to dark nucleon sequences DNA, RNA, and aminoacid sequences with 1-1 correlation between dark nucleon state and basic unit of the sequence. The dark realization of genetic code suggest a totally new view about biological evolution as a process, which is analogous to R&D in high tech industry rather than being completely random (see this). The candidates for new genes could be tested at dark matter level and in the case that they work they would be transcribed to their chemical equivalents.

3. New ideas related to metabolism

Also new ideas related to metabolism have emerged at the same time when evidence for quantal aspects of photosynthesis has been emerging (see this, this, this, and this).

1. Negentropic entanglement leads also to the idea about energy metabolism and negentropy transfer as different sides of the same coin. The model for DNA as topological in turn suggest that ADP → ATP and its reverse can be interpreted as a standardized reconnection process re-organizing connections between distant molecules connected by magnetic flux tubes by the relay defined by ATP molecule. Metabolic energy would - or at least could - go to the re-organization of the flux tube connections and therefore of the negentropic quantum entanglement. The question is how to fuse this vision with the hypothesis about metabolic currencies as differences of zero point kinetic energies for space-time sheets.

2. The radiation from Sun defines the fundamental metabolic currency. Solar radiation cannot be said to negentropic since negentropic entanglement is a 2-particle property. Solar photons could possess a large value of hbar or - more plausibly - suffer at the magnetic body of the living system a phase transition increasing the value of hbar. Could the absorption of large hbar photons arriving from Sun or from magnetic body by electrons generate spin 1 valence electron pairs pairs or provide the metabolic energy needed to re-arrange the flux tube connections between distant molecules by ADP+P_i → ATP process?

4. DNA as a topological quantum computer vision

The vision about DNA as topological quantum computer (see this) has turned out to be very general allowing to imagine several concrete realizations. The essential element is the coding of DNA nucleotides and one can imagine several options.

1. The original proposal for the realization of DNA as topological quantum computer is based on the representation of DNA nucleotides A, T, C, G as quarks u, d and their antiquarks and requires scaled up version of QCD (see this). This idea looks rather outlandish but could be justified by the strange findings of mathematician Barbara Shipman about honeybee dance (see this) and also by the p-adic length scale hierarchy and the hierarchy of Planck constants suggesting scaled variants of QCD like physics also in the length scale range relevant to the living cell.

2. The question whether one could one use spin 1 triplet and spin 0 singlet of dark electron pair instead of quarks and their antiquarks to represent codons, is rather obvious. The problem is that S= 0 state for electron pair however gives rise to vanishing dipole field so that flux tube structure would not be possible. The generation of flux tube structure along which supra currents can flow is however an essential element of the proposed mechanism of super-conductivity.

3. DNA as topological quantum computer hypothesis lead to the hypothesis that it is O= :s to which one must assign the flux tube pair responsible for the representation of the genetic code. Why O= would be in special role? And why should one have a pair of flux tubes? Could this relate to the coding of nucleotides by electron pairs? If there are two parallel flux tubes, one obtains tensor product 3× 3= 5+3+1 of electron triplets at the ends of the flux tubes. Could it be that A,T,C, and G are represented in terms of 3 and 1 and that the breaking of rotational invariance implies mixing of singlet and S_z=0 state of triplet so that nucleotides and their conjugates could correspond to the resulting two pairs related by reflection.

4. ATP→ ADP+P_i would correspond to the reconnection of the flux tubes of the flux tube pair with hydrogen bonds associated with two water molecules. The flux tubes would split and end to water molecules containing valence electron pair so the negentropic entanglement might not be totally lost. The reverse process would create flux tube connection labelled by the spin state equivalent of A,T,C, or G.

5. Pessimistic generalization of the second law of thermodynamics

The possibility of negentropic entanglement raises the question about the fate of the second law of thermodynamics. The proposal for a generalization of the second law of thermodynamics (see this) based on the most pessimistic vision is that entropy indeed increases also when negentropic entanglement is generated in state function reduction. If the generation of negentropic entanglement is accompanied by a compensating entropic entanglement, how it is generated? Or is the maximally pessimistic generalization really necessary? Is it implied automatically in time scales longer than the characteristic time scale associated with the causal diamonds serving as the basic correlates for conscious selves. One must apply ensemble description in these time scales: does the non-determinism of quantum jump imply second law at the level of ensemble automatically. If this argument is correct, second law would cease to hold in time scales than that characterizing the relevant CD. One might be able to anwer these quesetion by trying to understand the situation in the case of metabolism.

During writing I realized that the old chapter must be split to two pieces. The chapter of "Biosystems as Conscious Holograms" contains the updated material.