Homeostasis as self-organized quantum criticality?

I attach below the introduction of the article "Homeostasis as self-organized quantum criticality" written together with Reza Rastmanesh. I have dropped references. They can be found from the article which I shall add to Research Gate soon.

This article started as an attempt to understand the properties of cold shock proteins (CSPs) and heat shock proteins (HSPs) in TGD framework. As a matter of fact , these proteins have great deal of similarity and have much more general functions, so it is easier to talk about stress proteins (SPs) having two different modes of operation. time

As we proceed, it will be revealed that this issue is only one particular facet of a much bigger problem: how self-organized quantum criticality (SOQC) is possible? Criticality means by definition instability but SOQC is stable, which seems to be in conflict with the standard thermodynamics. In fact, living systems as a whole seem to be quantum criticalt and manage to stay near criticality, which means SOQC. Note that the self-organized criticality (SOC) is generalized to SOQC.

Topological Geometrodynamics (TGD) is a 43 year old proposal for a unification of fundamental interactions. Zero energy ontology (ZEO) is basic aspect of quantum TGD and allows to extend quantum measurement theory to a theory of consciousness and of living systems. ZEO also leads to a quantum theory of self-organization predicting both arrows of time. Could ZEO make SOQC possible as well?

Summary of the basic properties of CSPs and HSPs

Let's consider a summary of CSPs and HSPs or briefly SPs.

1. There is a large variety of cold shock proteins (CSP) and heat shock proteins (HSPs). CSPs and HSPs are essentially the same proteins and labelled by HSPX, where X denotes the molecular weight of the protein in kDaltons. The value range of X includes the values {22,60,70,90,104,110} and HSPs are classified into 6 families: small HSPs, HSPX, X ∈ {40,60,70,90,110}. At least HSP70 and HSP90 have ATPase at their end whereas HSP60 has ATP binding site. CSPs and HSPs consist of about 10³-10⁴ amino acids so that X varies by one order of magnitude.

   Their lengths in the un-folded active configuration are below 1 micrometer. CSPs/HSPs are expressed when the temperature of the organism is reduced /increased from the physiological temperature. CSPs possess cold-shock domains consisting of about 70-80 amino-acids thought to be crucial for their function. Part of the domain is similar to the so called RNP-1 RNA-binding motif. In fact, it has turned that CSP and HSP are essentially the same object and stress protein (SP) is a more appropriate term.

   Wikipedia article about cold shock domain mentions Escherichia Coli as an example. When the temperature is reduced from 37 C to 10 C, there is 4-5 hours lag phase after which growth is resumed at a reduced rate. During lag phase expression of around 13 proteins containing cold shock domains is increased 2-10 fold. CSPs are thought to help the cell to survive in temperatures lower than optimum growth temperature, by contrast with HSPs, which help the cell to survive in temperatures greater than the optimum, possibly by condensation of the chromosome and organization of the prokaryotic nucleoid. What is the mechanism behinds SP property is the main question.

2. SPs have a multitude of functions involved with the regulation, maintenance and healing of the system. They appear in stress situations like starvation, exposure to cold or heat or to UV light, during wound healing or tissue remodeling, and during the development of the embryo. SPs can act as chaperones and as ATPAses.

   SPs facilitate translation, and protein folding in these situations, which suggests that they are able to induce local heating/cooling of the molecules involved in these processes. CSPs could be considered like ovens and HSPs like coolants; systems with very large heat capacity acting as a heat bath and therefore able to perform temperature control. SPs serve as kind of molecular blacksmiths - or technical staff - stabilizing new proteins to facilitate correct folding and helping to refold damaged proteins. The blacksmith analogy suggests that this involves a local "melting" of proteins making it possible to modify them.

   What "melting" could mean in this context? One can distinguish between denaturation in which the folding ability is not lost and melting in which it is lost. Either local denaturation or even melting would be involved depending on how large the temperature increase is. In a aqueous environment the melting of water surrounding the protein as splitting of hydrogen bonds is also involved. One could also speak also about local unfolding of protein.

3. There is evidence for large change Δ C_p of heat capacity C_p (C_p= dE/dT for pressure changing feed of heat energy) for formation ion nucleotide-CSP fusion. This could be due to the high C_p of CSP. The value of heat capacity of SPs could be large only in vivo, not in vitro.
4. HSPs can appear even in hyper-thermophiles living in very hot places. This suggests that CSPs and HSPs are basically identical - more or less - but operate in different modes. CSPs must be able to extract metabolic energy and they indeed act as ATPases. HSPs must be able to extract thermal energy. If they are able to change their arrow of time as ZEO suggests, they can do this by dissipating with a reversed arrow of time.

To elucidate the topic from other angles, the following key questions should be answered:

1. Are CSPs and HSPs essentially identical?
2. Can one assign to SPs a high heat capacity (HHC) possibly explaining their ability to regulate temperature by acting as a heat bath? One can also ask whether HHC is present only in vivo that is in a aqueous environment and whether it is present only in the unfolded configuration of HP?

The notion of quantum criticality

The basic postulate of quantum TGD is that the TGD Universe is quantum critical. There is only a single parameter, Kähler coupling strength α_K mathematically analogous to a temperature and theory is unique by requiring that it is analogous to critical temperature. Kähler coupling strength has discrete spectrum labelled by the parameters of the extensions of rationals. Discrete p-adic coupling constant evolution replacing continuous coupling constant evolution is one aspect of quantum criticality.

What does quantum criticality mean?

1. Quite generally, critical states define higher-dimensional surfaces in the space of states labelled for instance by thermo-dynamical parameters like temperature, pressure, volume, and chemical potentials. Critical lines in the (P,T) plane is one example. Bringing in more variables one gets critical 2-surfaces, 3-surfaces, etc. For instance, in Thom's catastrophe theory cusp catastrophe corresponds to a V-shaped line, whose vertex is a critical point whereas butterflly catasrophe to 2-D critical surface. In thermodynamics the presence of additional thermodynamical variables like magnetization besides P and T leads to higher-dimensional critical surfaces.
2. There is a hierarchy of criticalities: there are criticalities inside criticalities. Critical point is the highest form of criticality for finite-D systems. Triple point, for instance, for water in which one cannot tell whether the phase is solid, liquid or gas. This applies completely generally irrespective of whether the system is a thermo-dynamical or quantal system. Also the catastrophe theory of Thom gives the same picture. The catastrophe graphs available in the Wikipedia article illustrate the situation for lower-dimensional catastrophes.
3. In TGD framework finite measurement resolution implies that the number of degrees of freedom (DFs) is effectively finite. Quantum criticality with finite measurement resolution is realized as an infinite number of hierarchies of inclusions of extensions of rationals. They correspond to inclusion hierarchies of hyperfinite factors of type II₁ (HFFs). The included HFF defines the DFs remaining below measurement resolution and it is possible to assign to the detected DFs dynamical symmetry groups, which are finite-dimensional. The symmetry group in never reachable ideal measurement resolution is infinite-D super-symplectic group of isometries of "world of classical worlds" (WCW) consisting of preferred extremals of Kähler action as analogs of Bohr orbits. Super-symplectic group extends the symmetries of superstring models.
4. Criticality in living systems is a special case of criticality - and as the work of Kauffman suggests - of quantum crticality as well. Living matter as we know, it most probably corresponds to extremely high level of criticality so that very many variables are nearly critical, not only temperature but also pressure. This relates directly to the high value of h_eff serving as IQ. The higher the value of h_eff, the higher the complexity of the system, and the larger the fluctuations and the scale of quantum coherence. There is a fractal hierarchy of increasingly quantum critical systems labelled by a hierarchy of increasing scales (also time scales).

   In ZEO classical physics is an exact part of quantum physics and quantum physics prevails in all scales. ZEO makes discontinuous macroscopic BSFRs to look like smooth deterministic time evolutions for the external observer with opposite arrow of time so that the illusion that physics is classical in long length scales is created.

Number theoretical physics or adelic physics is the cornerstone of TGD inspired theory of cognition and living matter and makes powerful predictions.

p-Adic length scale hypothesis deserves to be mentioned as an example of prediction since it has direct relevance for SPs.

1. p-Adic length scale hypothesis predicts that preferred p-adic length scales correspond to primes p≈ 2^k: L(k)= 2^(k-151)/2L(151), L(151)≈ 10 nm, thickness of neuronal membrane and a scale often appearing molecular biology.

2. TGD predicts 4 especially interesting p-adic length scales in the range 10 nm- 25 μ. One could speak of a number theoretical miracle. They correspond to Gaussian Mersenne primes M_G,k = (1+i)^k-1 with prime k ∈{151,157,163,167} and could define fundamental scales related with DNA coiling for instance.
3. The p-adic length scale L(k=167)= 2^(167-151)/2L(151)= 2.5 μ m so that SPs could correspond to k∈{165,167,169} . L(167) corresponds to the largest Gaussian Mersenne in the above series of 4 Gaussian Mersennes and to the size of cell nucleus. The size scale of a cold shock domain in turn corresponds to L(157), also associated with Gaussian Mersenne. Note that the wavelength defined by L(167) corresponds rather precisely to the metabolic currency .5 eV.
4. HSPX, X∈ {60,70,90} corresponds to a mass of X kDaltons (Dalton corresponds to proton mass). From the average mass 110 Dalton of amino acid and length of 1 nm one deduces that the straight HSP60, HSP70, and HSP90 have lengths about .55 μm, .64 μ, and .8 μm. The proportionality of the protein mass to length suggests that the energy scale assignable to HSPX is proportional to X. (HSP60, HSP70, HSP90) would have energy scales (2.27, 1.95,1.5 eV) for h_eff=h naturally assignable to biomolecules. The lower boundary of visible photon energies is a 1.7 eV.

   Remark: One has h= h_eff=nh₀ for n=6. What if one assumes n=2 giving h_eff=h/3 for which the observations of Randel Mills give support? This scales down the energy scales by factor 1/3 to (.77,.65,0.5) eV not far from the nominal value of metabolic energy currency of about .5 eV.

   There are strong motivations to assign to HSPs the thermal energy E=T=.031 eV at physiological temperature: this is not the energy E_max= .084 eV at the maximum of the energy distribution, which is by a factor 2.82 higher than E. The energies above are however larger by more than one order of magnitude. This scale should be assigned with the MBs of SPs.

5. The wavelengths assignable to HSPs correspond to the "notes" represented by dark photon frequencies. There is an amusing co-incidence suggesting a connection with the model of bio-harmony: the ratios of energy scales of HSP60 and HSP70 to the HSP90 energy are 3/2 and 1.3, respectively. If HSP90 corresponds to note C, HSP60 corresponds to G and HSP70 to note E with ratio 1.33. This gives C major chord in a reasonable approximation! Probably this is an accident. Note also that the weights X of HSPXs are only nominal values.

Hagedorn temperature, HHC, and self-organized quantum criticality (SOC)

Self-organized criticality (SOC) is an empirically verified notion. For instance, sand piles are SOQC systems. The paradoxical property of SOQC is that although criticality suggests instability, these systems stay around criticality. In standard physics SOQC is not well-understood. TGD based model for SOQC involves two basic elements: ZEO and Hagedorn temperature.

1. ZEO predicts that quantum coherence is possible in all scales due to the hierarchy of effective Planck constants predicted by adelic physics. "Big" (ordinary) state function reductions (BSFRs) change the arrow of time. Dissipation in reversed arrow of time looks like generation of order and structures instead of their decay - that is self-organization. Hence SOQC could be made possible by the instability of quantum critical systems in non-standard time direction. The system paradoxically attracted by the critical manifold in standard time direction would be repelled from it in an opposite time direction as criticality indeed requires.
2. Surfaces are systems with infinite number of DFs. Strings satisfy this condition as also magnetic flux tubes idealizable as strings in reasonable approximation. The number of DFs is infinite and this implies that when one heats this kind of system, the temperature grows slowly since heat energy excites new DFs. The system's maximum temperature is known as Hagedorn temperature and it depends on string tension for strings.

   In the TGD framework, magnetic flux tubes can be approximated as strings characterized by a string tension decreasing in long p-adic length scales. This implies a very high value of heat capacity since very small change of temperature implies very large flow of energy between the system and environment.

   T_H could be a general property of MB in all scales (this does not yet imply SOQC property). An entire hierarchy of Hagedorn temperatures determined by the string tension of the flux tube, and naturally identifiable as critical temperatures is predicted. The temperature is equal to the thermal energy of massless excitations such as photons emitted by the flux tube modellable as a black body.

   Remark: If the condition h_eff=h_gr , where h_gr is gravitational Planck constant introduced originally by Nottale, holds true, the cyclotron energies of the dark photons do not depend on h_eff, which makes them an ideal tool of quantum control.

   Hagedorn temperature would make them SOQC systems by temperature regulation if CSP type systems are present they can serve as ovens by liberating heat energy and force the local temperature of environment to their own temperature near T_H. Their own temperature is reduced very little in the process. These systems can also act as HSP/CSP type systems by extracting heat energy from/providing it to the environment and in this manner reduce/increase the local temperature. System would be able to regulate its temperature.

A natural hypothesis is that T_H corresponds to quantum critical temperature and in living matter to the physiological temperature. The ability to regulate the local temperature so that it stays near T_H has interpretation as self-organized (quantum) criticality (SOC). In the TGD framework these notions are more or less equivalent since classical physics is an exact part of quantum physics and BSFRs create the illusion that the Universe is classical in long (actually all!) scales.

Homeostasis is a basic aspect of living systems. System tends to preserve its flow equilibrium and opposes the attempts to modify it. Homeostasis involves complex many-levels field back circuits involving excitatory and inhibitory elements. If living systems are indeed quantum critical systems, homeostasis could more or less reduce to SOQC as a basic property of the TGD Universe.

I will add the article "Homeostasis and self-organized quantum criticality" to Research Gate.

See either the article Homeostasis as self-organized quantum criticality or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Articles and other material related to TGD.