Quantum Biology: Current Status and Opportunities

Recent evidence has recently emerged that plants use a form of quantum computing to calculate how best to direct energy through their photosynthetic apparatus. Scientists have also discovered that birds, insects and other animals appear to use entanglement (what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” to detect the earth’s magnetic field). And there is solid evidence that enzymes, those metabolic workhorses that drive much of the action in our cells, use the process known as quantum tunnelling to accelerate chemical reactions. We may even use quantum mechanics to smell! Writing in the prestigious UK-based science journal Nature, Philip Ball announced “The Dawn of Quantum Biology”; whereas, in Scientific American, Vlatko Vedral writes about “Living in a Quantum World”. Centres of quantum theoreticians and experimentalists on both sides of the Atlantic are struggling to understand how fragile quantum mechanical phenomena previously thought to be confined to highly rarefied laboratory systems at temperatures close to absolute zero, manage to survive in the wet, warm biological world.

This workshop on Quantum Biology will bring together eminent international researchers who have made landmark advances in this field. 

SPEAKERS

Dr Alexandra Olaya-Castro, University College, London
Quantum phononics in biology

Dr Paul Davies, University of Arizona
Quantum epigenetics

Professor Greg Scholes, University of Toronto
Evolution, speciation, and coherence in the light harvesting proteins of photosynthetic algae

Professor Nigel Scrutton, University of Manchester
Quantum effects in biological catalysis

Professor Thorsten Ritz, UC Irvine
A biological compass built on coherent quantum reactions: Design principles and supporting evidence

Dr Jennifer Brooks, Harvard
Can the nose smell quantized properties of odorant molecules in olfaction?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili, University of Surrey
Quantum tunnelling models of genetic mutations

Professor Johnjoe McFadden, University of Surrey
Why biology needs quantum mechanics

Professor Vlatko Vedral, University of Oxford
Quantum thermodynamics of electron transport

Professor Greg Engel, University of Chicago
Design principles behind long-lived quantum coherence

Professor Sandu Popescu, University of Bristol
What is quantum in quantum biology?

ORGANISERS 

Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Department of Physics, University of Surrey

Professor Johnjoe McFadden, Microbial Sciences, University of Surrey

Professor Vlatko Vedral, University of Oxford

POST-EVENT PUBLICATIONS

Publication of Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology, in 2014, by Bantam Press (UK) and Random House (US)

Publication of two research papers on quantum biology:

'Environment-induced dephasing versus von Neumann measurements in proton tunneling', A.D. Godbeer, J.S. Al-Khalili,
and P.D. Stevenson, Phys. Rev. A 90 (2014) 012102; and

'Modelling proton tunnelling in the adenine–thymine base pair', AD. Godbeer, J.S. Al-Khalili and P.D. Stevenson, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 17 (2015) 13034-1304