The Origin of Life and the Hidden Role of Quantum Criticality

KentuckyFC writes One of the great puzzles of biology is how the molecular machinery of life is so finely coordinated. Even the simplest cells are complex three dimensional biochemical factories in which a dazzling array of machines pump, push, copy, and compute in a dance of extraordinarily detailed complexity. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how the ordinary processes of electron transport allow this complexity to emerge given the losses that arise in much simpler circuits. Now a group of researchers led by Stuart Kauffmann have discovered that the electronic properties of biomolecules are entirely different to those of ordinary conductors. It turns out that most biomolecules exist in an exotic state called quantum criticality that sits on the knife edge between conduction and insulation. In other words, biomolecules belong to an entirely new class of conductor that is not bound by the ordinary rules of electron transport. Of course, organic molecules can be ordinary conductors or insulators and the team have found a few biomolecules that fall into these categories. But evolution seems to have mainly selected biomolecules that are quantum critical, implying that that this property must confer some evolutionary advantage. Exactly what this could be isn't yet clear but it must play an important role in the machinery of life and its origin.

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Perspective from a chemist

[Anonymous Coward]

I did my Ph.D. in physical chemistry, focusing on electron transport in DNA, proteins, and other organic molecules. I read the arxiv paper and found it almost incomprehensible from this perspective. There is no reference to existing models of electron transport in biological systems(*), and it's not clear that their "generalized fractal dimension" for a protein has anything at all to do with electron transport. While it's possible that this approach is just so revolutionary that it doesn't need to be grounded in what's already known/believed about this field, it's more likely that this is just pseudoscience. Further supporting this hypothesis is the existence of phrases like "Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution" in the text. Serious science doesn't need that kind of hype in the paper.

*except at the end where they reference a couple experimental papers that tangentially relate to this topic