Department of Physics, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 84156-83111, Iran.
School of Physics, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), P.O. Box 19395-5531, Tehran, Iran.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jan 30;7:41625. doi: 10.1038/srep41625.
The mechanism of selectivity in ion channels is still an open question in biology for more than half a century. Here, we suggest that quantum interference can be a solution to explain the selectivity mechanism in ion channels since interference happens between similar ions through the same size of ion channels. In this paper, we simulate two neighboring ion channels on a cell membrane with the famous double-slit experiment in physics to investigate whether there is any possibility of matter-wave interference of ions via movement through ion channels. Our obtained decoherence timescales indicate that the quantum states of ions can only survive for short times, i.e. ≈100 picoseconds in each channel and ≈17-53 picoseconds outside the channels, giving the result that the quantum interference of ions seems unlikely due to environmental decoherence. However, we discuss our results and raise few points, which increase the possibility of interference.
离子通道的选择性机制在半个多世纪以来一直是生物学中的一个悬而未决的问题。在这里，我们提出量子干涉可以是解释离子通道选择性机制的一种解决方案，因为干涉发生在通过相同大小的离子通道的相似离子之间。在本文中，我们使用物理学中著名的双缝实验模拟细胞膜上的两个相邻离子通道，以研究离子是否有可能通过离子通道运动而产生物质波干涉。我们得到的退相干时间尺度表明，离子的量子态只能在短时间内存在，即在每个通道中约为 100 皮秒，在通道外约为 17-53 皮秒，这表明由于环境退相干，离子的量子干涉似乎不太可能。然而，我们讨论了我们的结果并提出了几点，这增加了干涉的可能性。
