Comment on ‘The smallest clock’

Abstract

It has been suggested that Wigner's clock inequalities can be applied to biological systems. Pešić was the first to suggest this by applying these inequalities to the reproduction time of a mycoplasma (1993 Eur. J. Phys. 14 90). More recently, Goel applied Wigner's clock inequalities to the system formed by a Taq DNA polymerase reading a phage lambda DNA strand, concluding that the behaviour of polymerases is governed by quantum mechanical processes. By means of a counterexample, using a Pfu DNA polymerase, I show that current experimental evidence does not allow us to conclude that Wigner's inequalities govern the behaviour of polymerases. Furthermore, both works are based on an incorrect interpretation of the concept of position uncertainty.