Mazzoccoli Gianluigi
Division of Internal Medicine and Chronobiology Laboratory, Department of Medical Sciences, Fondazione IRCCS "Casa Sollievo Della Sofferenza", San Giovanni Rotondo (FG), Italy.
Front Physiol. 2022 Jul 6;13:892582. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2022.892582. eCollection 2022.
Biological processes and physiological functions in living beings are featured by oscillations with a period of about 24 h (circadian) or cycle at the second and third harmonic (ultradian) of the basic frequency, driven by the biological clock. This molecular mechanism, common to all kingdoms of life, comprising animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and protists, represents an undoubted adaptive advantage allowing anticipation of predictable changes in the environmental niche or of the interior Biological rhythms are the field of study of Chronobiology. In the last decade, growing evidence hints that molecular platforms holding up non-trivial quantum phenomena, including entanglement, coherence, superposition and tunnelling, evolved in biosystems. Quantum effects have been mainly implicated in processes related to electromagnetic radiation in the spectrum of visible light and ultraviolet rays, such as photosynthesis, photoreception, magnetoreception, DNA mutation, and not light related such as mitochondrial respiration and enzymatic activity. Quantum effects in biological systems are the field of study of Quantum Biology. Rhythmic changes at the level of gene expression, as well as protein quantity and subcellular distribution, confer temporal features to the molecular platform hosting electrochemical processes and non-trivial quantum phenomena. Precisely, a huge amount of molecules plying scaffold to quantum effects show rhythmic level fluctuations and this biophysical model implies that timescales of biomolecular dynamics could impinge on quantum mechanics biofunctional role. The study of quantum phenomena in biological cycles proposes a profitable "entanglement" between the areas of interest of these seemingly distant scientific disciplines to enlighten functional roles for quantum effects in rhythmic biosystems.
生物体内的生物过程和生理功能以大约24小时的振荡周期(昼夜节律)或基本频率的二次和三次谐波周期(超日节律)为特征,由生物钟驱动。这种分子机制存在于所有生命王国,包括动物、植物、真菌、细菌和原生生物,代表了一种无疑的适应性优势,使生物体能够预测环境生态位或内部的可预测变化。生物节律是时间生物学的研究领域。在过去十年中,越来越多的证据表明,生物系统中进化出了支持非平凡量子现象(包括纠缠、相干、叠加和隧穿)的分子平台。量子效应主要涉及与可见光和紫外线光谱中的电磁辐射相关的过程,如光合作用、光接收、磁接收、DNA突变,以及与光无关的过程,如线粒体呼吸和酶活性。生物系统中的量子效应是量子生物学的研究领域。基因表达水平以及蛋白质数量和亚细胞分布的节律性变化,赋予了承载电化学过程和非平凡量子现象的分子平台时间特征。确切地说,大量为量子效应提供支架的分子表现出节律性的水平波动,这种生物物理模型意味着生物分子动力学的时间尺度可能会影响量子力学的生物功能作用。对生物周期中量子现象的研究提出了这些看似遥远的科学学科感兴趣领域之间有益的“纠缠”,以阐明量子效应在节律性生物系统中的功能作用。