Vučković Jana, Zadeh-Haghighi Hadi, Beane Wendy S, Simon Christoph
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Institute for Quantum Science and Technology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
bioRxiv. 2024 Nov 21:2024.11.20.624392. doi: 10.1101/2024.11.20.624392.
Superoxide concentration and tissue regeneration in planarians exhibit a complex non-monotonic dependence on the strength of an applied weak magnetic field. While this is difficult to understand based on classical physics, a recently proposed quantum model based on a flavin-superoxide radical pair mechanism could replicate the previously observed superoxide concentrations. However, this model also predicts increased superoxide concentrations for both lower and higher fields. This seemed to conflict with earlier experimental observations on blastema sizes, which were correlated with superoxide in the previously observed regime but were known not to follow the predicted trends for lower and higher fields. Motivated by this apparent contradiction, we here directly experimentally tested the predictions of the quantum model for superoxide for lower and higher fields. To our own surprise, our experiments confirmed the predictions of the radical pair model for superoxide, and incorporating interactions with multiple nuclei further improved the model's agreement with the experimental data. While open questions remain regarding the exact relationship between blastema sizes and superoxide, which is revealed to be more complex than previously observed, and the detailed properties of the underlying radical pair, our results significantly support a quantum biological explanation for the observed magnetic field effects.
涡虫体内的超氧化物浓度和组织再生对施加的弱磁场强度呈现出复杂的非单调依赖性。虽然基于经典物理学很难理解这一现象，但最近提出的基于黄素 - 超氧化物自由基对机制的量子模型能够重现先前观测到的超氧化物浓度。然而，该模型还预测在较低和较高磁场下超氧化物浓度都会增加。这似乎与早期关于芽基大小的实验观察结果相矛盾，在之前观测的范围内芽基大小与超氧化物相关，但已知在较低和较高磁场下并不遵循预测趋势。受这一明显矛盾的启发，我们在此直接通过实验测试了量子模型对较低和较高磁场下超氧化物的预测。令我们惊讶的是，我们的实验证实了超氧化物自由基对模型的预测，并且纳入与多个原子核的相互作用进一步提高了模型与实验数据的一致性。虽然关于芽基大小与超氧化物之间的确切关系仍存在悬而未决的问题，事实证明这种关系比之前观测到的更为复杂，以及潜在自由基对的详细性质，但我们的结果显著支持了对观测到的磁场效应的量子生物学解释。
