Biological complexity, quantum coherent states and the problem of efficient transmission of information inside a cell

Abstract

The intracellular channel of information transmission was analyzed from the point of view of complexity. The most important steps in the transfer of information within a cell are the folding, transport and recognition of proteins. It was shown that the large number of conformational degrees of freedom that proteins possess can paradoxically lead to an information channel with an exponentially small capacity. To resolve this paradox, a model, which assumes a quantum collective behavior of biologically important molecules, was proposed. Experiments to test the quantum nature of the intracellular transfer of information were also proposed. © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd.