Epigenetic Evolution and Theory of Open Quantum Systems: Unifying Lamarckism and Darwinism

Abstract

This chapter is devoted to a model of the epigenetic cellular evolution based on the mathematical formalism of open quantum systems. We emphasize that, although in this book we restrict our QL-modeling to the epigenetic evolution, it is clear that the structure of the model allows it to be extended to describe evolution of biological organisms in general. We restrict the model to epigenetics, since here we can use a closer analogy with quantum mechanics and mimic behavior of a cell as behavior of a quantum particle. In general, we have to take into account cell death (annihilation in quantum terminology) and birth (creation). Mathematically, such a model is more complicated. One of the basic quantum information constructions used in this chapter is entanglement of quantum states. Our evolutionary model is based on representation of the epigenetic state of a cell as entanglement of various epigenetic markers.