Abstract
By resorting to a model inspired to the standard Davydov and Holstein-Fröhlich models, in the present paper we study the motion of an electron along a chain of heavy particles modeling a sequence of nucleotides proper to a DNA fragment. Starting with a model Hamiltonian written in second quantization, we use the Time Dependent Variational Principle to work out the dynamical equations of the system. It can be found that, under the action of an external source of energy transferred to the electron, and according to the excitation site, the electron current can display either a broad frequency spectrum or a sharply peaked frequency spectrum. This sequence-dependent charge transfer phenomenology is suggestive of a potentially rich variety of electrodynamic interactions of DNA molecules under the action of electron excitation. This could imply the activation of interactions between DNA and transcription factors, or between DNA and external electromagnetic fields.
Highlights
A central question concerning the brain/mind activity and molecular dynamics in biological systems is whether in the warm, wet and noisy environment of living matter there are some processes for which quantum phenomena can play a relevant role
Following the quotations given in Ref. [7], electron transport on DNA can be involved in the action of DNA damage response enzymes, transcription factors, or polymerase co-factors, which are relevant processes in the cell [7,8]
The average electron current is derived from the standard probability current j( xi, t) associated with the wave function |ψ(t)i in (9), which, in the discretized version along the chain of nucleotides and ready for its numerical computation, reads as j ( xi, t ) =
Summary
A central question concerning the brain/mind activity and molecular dynamics in biological systems is whether in the warm, wet and noisy environment of living matter there are some processes for which quantum phenomena can play a relevant role. In the search for relevant quantum effects in living matter, electrons are certainly good candidates, as is confirmed by the studies on the π-stacks of aromatic rings in proteins and in neuronal microtubules. Within this broad field of investigation, we focus on the behavior of electrons along DNA strands. [7], electron transport on DNA can be involved in the action of DNA damage response enzymes, transcription factors, or polymerase co-factors, which are relevant processes in the cell [7,8]. Evidence has been given [7,9] that a DNA base excision repair enzyme enters the DNA repair process [10,11]
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