Abstract
I review some recent developments concerning soliton solutions in biological microtubules and their significance in transferring energy without dissipation. I discuss various types of soliton solutions, as well as ‘spikes’, of the associated non-linear Lagrange equations describing the dynamics of a ‘pseudo-spin non-linear σ-model’ that models the dynamics of a microtubule system with dipole-dipole interactions. These results will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of the functional properties of microtubules, including the motor protein dynamics and the information transfer processes. With regards to the latter we also speculate on the use of microtubules as ‘logical’ gates. Our considerations are classical, but the soliton solutions may have a microscopic quantum origin, which we briefly touch upon.
Highlights
The role of solitons in biological systems as providers of efficient energy transport, in analogy with the frictionless electric current transfer in superconductivity theories, has a long history
I discuss various types of soliton solutions, as well as ‘spikes’, of the associated non-linear Lagrange equations describing the dynamics of a ‘pseudo-spin non-linear σ-model’ that models the dynamics of a microtubule system with dipole-dipole interactions
In this talk, I reviewed some recent work on soliton solutions arising in the non-linear dynamics of dimer dipoles in MicroTubular bio-systems modelled by pseudo spin non-linear σ-models
Summary
The role of solitons in biological systems as providers of efficient (mostly dissipation free) energy transport, in analogy with the frictionless electric current transfer in superconductivity theories, has a long history. In a series of works [8, 9], we have developed a microsocpic quantum electrodynamics cavity model for MT, in which electromagnetic interactions between the electric dipole moments of the tubulin protein dimer units and the corresponding dipole quanta in the (thermally isolated) water interiors of the in vivo MT, are argued to be the dominant forces, inducing environmental entanglement and eventual decoherence [6] in at most O(10−6 − 10−7) s Such times are much shorter than the required time scale for conscious perception, but have been argued to be sufficient for dissipation-less energy transfer and signal transduction along moderately long MT of length sizes of order μm = 10−6 m. When κ < 4σ, the ground state of the system is ferroelectric
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