Quantum Tunneling Determines Life's Survival... Demonstration of Cell Repair Mechanisms
Abstract
A study published on bioRxiv demonstrated that quantum tunneling plays a key role in in vitro hydrolytic enzyme reactions by analyzing kinetic isotope effects (KIE) through deuterium substitution. The involvement of the quantum tunneling effect was confirmed through temperature dependence experiments in major biochemical reactions such as SIRT3-mediated deacetylation, I-SceI-mediated DNA cleavage, and caspase-3-mediated protein cleavage. By observing that DNA homologous recombinational (HR) repair in living cells is almost completely inhibited in a deuterium environment that lowers the probability of quantum tunneling, it was demonstrated that quantum effects dominate cell survival itself. [Quantum Biology Society] Behind life phenomena lies a strange quantum world that cannot be explained by classical mechanics. A prime example is quantum tunneling, where particles pass through reaction energy barriers as if by magic. While it has been known that quantum tunneling contributes to speeding up some enzyme reactions inside proteins , there has been a lack of concrete empirical evidence as to whether this is an essential physical requirement directly linked to actual cell survival. Recently, a groundbreaking study was published showing that if the quantum tunneling effect is inhibited, the cell's life support system itself completely halts. The paper titled "Cell viability is dominated by quantum effects," published on the preprint repository bioRxiv, strongly supports this. A…
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