Coherent Excitation in Active Biological Systems

Abstract

The principal types of coherent excitations: metastable state with high electric dipole moment, and coherent high-frequency electric vibrations are derived from simple models. Far-reaching consequences for biological systems are discussed. The conjecture is sup-ported by a great variety of experiments. 1. General From the point of view of atomic and molecular physics (and chemistry), biological materials are extremely complex and complicated systems. Yet they function in a most systematic way. Molecular biology succeeded in establishing the structure of the relevant giant molecules. Thus, e.g., it was found that enzymes possess an active site where the relevant processes can take place according to the laws of chemistry. Yet, this fails to explain their enormous catalytic power. Clearly, function must be treated in terms of dynamic, rather than static, properties. As a next step one may be tempted to introduce the known interaction between the atoms and ions of the system and, based on the known structure, calculate their dynamical properties. Such a procedure would be relevant in the range of linear dis-placements from a rigid structure like a solid. Enzymes, however, do not form such a rigid structure. Attempts to carry out the appropriate calculation have been discussed recently.