Quantum Biology and hard-boiled detectives

Earlier this week I finished reading Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden's Life on the Edge - the Coming Age of Quantum Biology.

This clearly-written and thoughtful account describes ways in which quantum mechanics is, or is at least postulated to be, involved in biological systems. It gives an overview of both the fundamental ideas of quantum mechanics (without the maths) as well as explanations of intracellular chemical processes.

The book opens with a description of the epic migration of the European robin and weaves a carefully crafted tale of the way that quantum mechanics might be involved in animals apparent magnetic sense via a radical pair mechanism. A whole chapter later in the book considers magnetosense more generally.

Other areas that are considered include quantum tunneling of protons as part of enzymes' mechanisms, quantum superposition of DNA base tautomers as an origin of mutation and hence as a driving force for evolution, and the nature of consciousness.

An exciting book with a highly engaging and readable prose style, I most wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone interested in Biology, Chemistry or Physics - if you are a scientist sensu lato, I think you will enjoy this!


I've also read one of Raymond Chandler novel's - The little sister. This is the fifth in the Philip Marlowe series and is, as always, a dark, complex and fast-paced story. In the early volumes the similes seem to drip off the pages like rain drops over the top of gutter full of leaf mould. Ahem. But in this volume I was struck by the style being more tight and controlled and less like the many parodies and pastiches of the Marlowe books.