Nature's quantum subways
Nature's quantum subways
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大自然的量子地铁
DOI：
10.1088/2058-7058/26/03/35
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发表时间：
2013
期刊：
影响因子：
0.6
通讯作者：
Al-Khalili J
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Al-Khalili J
“我们中的一些人应该冒险开始对事实和理论进行综合，尽管对其中一些事实和理论的了解是二手的和不完整的——并且冒着愚弄自己的风险。” 1943 年，埃尔文·薛定谔 (Erwin Schrödinger) 在从量子物理学涉足遗传学领域时如此说道。他很快在 1944 年出版的影响巨大的书《生命是什么？》中证实了这些话，书中他预言遗传信息存储在非周期性晶体中——不到十年后，弗朗西斯·克里克 (Francis Crick) 和詹姆斯·沃森 (James Watson) 发现了双螺旋结构，证实了这一观点。今天，虽然量子力学和生物学的一些奇怪方面之间的因果关系尚未得到最终证实，但我们中一小部分人（但数量不断增加）会赞同薛定谔的观点。确实，尽管可以在半个世纪前的文献中找到许多例子，但仍然没有广泛接受量子力学——亚原子世界的令人困惑但强大的理论——可能发挥作用。 在生物过程中发挥着至关重要的作用。当然，生物学最基本的是化学，而化学是建立在原子和分子行为和配合方式的量子力学规则之上的。但生物学家（直到最近）一直对该理论违反直觉的方面不屑一顾——他们认为这是不必要的，更喜欢他们传统的生命分子结构模型。同样，物理学家也不愿意冒险进入混乱而复杂的活细胞世界。当他们可以在物理实验室的受控环境中更干净地测试他们的理论时，他们至少觉得自己有机会了解正在发生的事情，为什么还要这么做呢？但现在，生物学实验技术已经变得如此复杂，测试量子物理学家熟悉的一些想法的时机已经成熟。
“Some of us should venture to embark on a synthesis of facts and theories, albeit with secondhand and incomplete knowledge of some of them–and at the risk of making fools of ourselves.” So said Erwin Schrödinger in 1943 upon his foray from quantum physics into genetics. He would soon back up these words with his hugely influential 1944 book, What is Life?, in which he predicted that genetic information is stored within an aperiodic crystal–an idea that would be confirmed by Francis Crick and James Watson less than a decade later when they discovered the structure of the double helix. Today, a small but increasing number of us would echo Schrödinger’s sentiments, even though the case has yet to be made conclusively for a causal link between some of the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics and biology.It is certainly true that although many examples can be found in the literature dating back half a century, there is still no widespread acceptance that quantum mechanics–that baffling yet powerful theory of the subatomic world–might play a crucial role in biological processes. Of course, biology is, at its most basic, chemistry, and chemistry is built on the rules of quantum mechanics in the way atoms and molecules behave and fit together. But biologists have (until recently) been dismissive of the counterintuitive aspects of the theory–they feel it to be unnecessary, preferring their traditional balland-stick models of the molecular structures of life. Likewise, physicists have been reluctant to venture into the messy and complex world of the living cell. Why should they when they can test their theories far more cleanly in the controlled environment of the physics lab, where they at least feel they have a chance of understanding what is going on? But now, experimental techniques in biology have become so sophisticated that the time is ripe for testing a few ideas familiar to quantum physicists.