Since the early days of quantum physics, its influence on biology has always been present in a reductionist sense: quantum physics and electrodynamics shape all molecules and thus determine molecular recognition, the workings of proteins, and DNA. He anticipated a molecular basis for human heredity, which was later confirmed to be the DNA molecule ( Watson and Crick, 1953).
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But objects of increasing complexity have attracted a growing scientific interest, and since the size scales of both physics and the life sciences have approached each other, it is now very natural to ask: what is the role of quantum physics in and for biology?Įrwin Schrödinger, most famous for his wave equation for nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, already ventured across the disciplines in his lecture series “What is life?” ( Schrödinger, 1944). Quantum physics, on the other hand, was initially centered on microscopic phenomena with photons, electrons, and atoms. While in the days of Darwin and Mendel the life sciences were mainly focusing on botany or zoology, modern biology, pharmacology, and medicine are deeply rooted in a growing understanding of molecular interactions and organic information processing. We discuss our criteria for a future “quantum biology,” its current status, recent experimental progress, and also the restrictions that nature imposes on bold extrapolations of quantum theory to macroscopic phenomena. We recapitulate the generic and sometimes unintuitive characteristics of quantum physics and point to a number of applications in the life sciences. The present perspective article shall serve as a “pedestrian guide” to the growing interconnections between the two fields.
Simultaneously, quantum physics, originally rooted in a world-view of quantum coherences, entanglement, and other nonclassical effects, has been heading toward systems of increasing complexity.
Over the past decades the life sciences have succeeded in providing ever more and refined explanations of macroscopic phenomena that were based on an improved understanding of molecular structures and mechanisms. Quantum physics and biology have long been regarded as unrelated disciplines, describing nature at the inanimate microlevel on the one hand and living species on the other hand.