Quantum Biology | Explained by Jim Al-Khalili

Prof. Jim-Al-Khalili explains the emerging field of quantum biology and discusses how this new discipline has developed from its inception in the 1920s until fruition in the late 1990s with the discovery of quantum effects in magnetoreception, olfaction, enzyme catalysis, and photosynthesis.

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Summary:
0:00 Quantum Biology in a Nutshell
0:55 The Origins of Quantum Biology
7:39 Quantum Biology after the Discovery of the DNA
12:30 Quantum Biology in the 21st Century
18:08 Potential Applications
20:00 Leverhulme Quantum Biology Doctoral Training Centre (QB-DTC)

** Quantum Biology in a Nutshell **
If I was to define quantum biology, it is not what many people might think, that at the very deepest level, if you look into a living system, a living cell, down to the level of the molecules and atoms then you hit the quantum world, because that would be true for life as well as for inanimate matter, where the quantum rules kick in. Quantum biology, as we define it today, means exploring the mechanisms and phenomena that rely on non-trivial quantum effects within living cells. By non-trivial I mean quantum tunnelling, long lived quantum coherence and superposition, quantum entanglement. These are surprising effects that we are now seeing taking place within living organisms. That is quantum biology.

** The Origins of Quantum Biology **
We tend to think about quantum biology as being quite a new area of interdisciplinary science and in many ways it is. But actually it has rather old origins, going all the way back to the early 1930s. In fact we can even trace it back to a particular lecture that Niels Bohr gave at a conference in 1929. He hinted at the idea, as many quantum pioneers were doing back then, that maybe quantum mechanics holds the key to so much of science and the fact that quantum mechanics, in their opinion, solved the problems of physics and chemistry, they arrogantly then assumed that it could also be used to tackle the mystery of life itself. Bohr was one of these early quantum pioneers, who suggested that maybe quantum mechanics could play a role. He inspired other physicists, particularly people like Max Delbrück, who then actually changed field and became a biophysicist working in molecular biology and also Pascual Jordan.

** Quantum Biology after the Discovery of the DNA **
The one thing that we have to remember is that quantum mechanics and then developing in quantum field theory and so on was developing in parallel with the new areas of biology, genetics and molecular biology. The geneticists and molecular biologists by the 1930s and 1940s and indeed 1950s, when the double helix structure was discovered, really felt they had no need for quantum mechanics, they were so successful. They were learning so much about the molecular structure within living systems. They saw no requirement to bring in the strangeness of quantum mechanics. So to a large extent quantum biology really sort of went into the background. Particularly after the discovery of the double helix of DNA, spectroscopists and molecular biologists really were learning so much more about the building blocks of the cell, the instruction manual of life, they had no room for quantum superposition and the measurement problem, the uncertainty principle, and on all that silly business, they would leave that to physicists.

In the 1990s suddenly there were experimental techniques using fast pulsed lasers, 2D spectroscopy, where you could pump biomolecules, excite them and see how they decay. And suddenly some of these experiments were beginning to show that there were quantum effects going on, long living coherence, long lived interference effects that you couldn’t explain otherwise. Think of the two slits experiment in quantum mechanics, firing a beam of particles, photons or electrons, through the two slits and you see the interference pattern. Even when you fire one at the time, you can’t explain that interference pattern using classical mechanics, you need quantum mechanics. Well, they were seeing the equivalent of that taking place in certain special mechanisms with living cells, for example the way enzymes transfer particles from one part of the molecule to another, electrons and later even protons, 2000 times more massive than electrons, they were seeing these protons quantum tunnel from one place to another.

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[DMS_Knighted_Drifter]

This is the best QB presentation I've seen yet. In a little over 21 minutes I've understood more about QB then the roughly 4 hours of previous footage managed to teach me

[charleshudson]

Excellent video. I'm a physicist; I love your book Life On The Edge. I recommend it all the time.

[MichaelTheDanishHistorian]

How could this video not have much much more views and likes..? this is simply an incredible explanation from Prof. Jim-Al-Khalili .... It really settled some questions I have been strugling with, and openend up new ones. Thanks a lot

[ltcarlston]

Absolutely the best explanation I have ever seen! I learned very much, Prof. Al-Khalili increased my curiosity on the subject.

[lazylazyshark]

fascinating field, I am approaching it from a med-bio background. He is a great communicator, his books are insightful and pleasant to read

[assaul]

So glad to hear it’s moved from hobby to serious study. You will be successful in your pursuit along this line of discovery.

[rookhoatzin]

We have learned so much studying life yet life itself is a fundamental mystery. Animals that use camouflage without ever knowing what they look like. Just one example of the vast number of evolutionary strategies that evolve with motive and without a clear Darwinian path or mutation. As an atheist i am pressed to come up with an explanation of how complex ecosystem/environments form and how individual living forms with limited capacity for sensing their environments evolve such amazing survival strategies. There is clearly more going on with life and it seems likely an understanding will come from an understanding of broader universal concepts. This stuff is brilliant.

[Ockwells]

Prof.Jim Al-Khalil is an incredible educator I posses all his authored books and BBC videos

[FJKMUSIC]

Thank you for Italian subtitles.
I watched the video entirely with great pleasure and interest

[progesundheit]

Although chance is an mathematical impossible solution to life's and the material world's complex and significant order, and surely to the information needed programming it as precise as it works, the heart is not willing to come to the obvious conclusion. Humility is our greatest teacher helping us to to take in knowledge continuously and to open the borders build in our minds.

[liberty-matrix]

"Life has had nearly 4 billions years to perfect all it's trickery." ~Jim Al-Khalili

[GP-qbhi]

We are trying to decode 4 billion years worth of evolution in our human lifetimes. No wonder we know so little yet and how funny that matter needed this much time to start looking in the mirror.
I wish you the greatest perseverance to do the research as one day this knowledge will transform life itself as we know it today.

[Deeps]

Being a student of biotechnology, I have always intrigued by the fact of physics concepts in any of the biological exchange reactions. The fundamental usually lies in the electron exchange between any biochemical reaction that led into major changes biological changes. Now completely convinced, this part of the field has to be explored and will be explored in near future very soon in terms of diagnosis field.

[batcryalok]

Great video. I saw a demonstration years ago that an eye can detect a single photon. Detecting a single photon has to be a quantum effect. As we experience the Universe mostly via our vision, quantum effect must be extremely important to biology.

[iramtauqir]

Thank you so much for this. Very clean, clear, comprehensive and extremely engaging explanation of such a complex subject. Amazing.

[victorswenson]

Thank you professor. Your youtube videos, books interviews and presentations, sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm for learning and your field of interest is very much appreciated Thank you !!!

[pedruu]

thats incredible! one spetacular phenomenum of nature, uniting quantum mechanics with biology. I cant hold on waiting for the moment that all sciences will be connected. The work of QB is one of the exemples that all is conected.

[cultureofcritique]

Love Jim. Probably the best science communicator of our time.

[be-nazirfarzana]

he truly is in love with the mystery of life

[davidhoffman]

Ever since I got my degree in theology in1981, I been intrigued by this idea or belief in the resurrection of the body, not the soul, but the body. It obviously hasn't happened yet, but I've always wondered what this is going to look like. It's all over in the liturgy. John Updike's 'Seven stanzas at Eastern has an interesting perspective; the cells dissolution reversed, molecules reversed, amino acids rekindled. I recently read Ezekiel's 'Valley of the dry bones '. And there was an experiment recently at Yale where researchers revived pigs brains that had been dead for hours. Maybe some day quantum biology will have a roll in making this happen.