User:LBuras/sandbox

Mutation
Deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, acts as the instructions for making proteins throughout the human body. It consists of 4 nucleotides guanine, thymine, cytosine, and adenine. The order of these nucleotides give the “recipe” for the different proteins.

Whenever a cell reproduces, it must copy these strands of DNA. However sometimes throughout the process of copying the strand of DNA a mutation, or an error in the DNA code, can occur. A theory for the reasoning behind DNA mutation is explained in the Lowdin DNA mutation model. In this model, a nucleotide may change its form through a process called quantum tunneling. The proton may tunnel out of one of the nucleotides changing its structure. Because of this, the changed nucleotide will lose its ability to pair with its original base pair and consequently changing the structure and order of the DNA strand. CITATION.

Repair
Exposure to ultraviolet lights and other types of radiation can cause DNA mutation and damage. The radiations also can modify the bonds along the DNA strand in the pyrimidines and cause them to bond with themselves creating a dimer.

These bonds are repaired to their original form by a DNA repair enzyme photolyase. It, as its prefix implies, is reliant on light in order to repair the strand. Photolyase works with its cofactor FADH, flavin adenine dinucleotide, while repairing the DNA. Photolyase is excited by visible light and transfers an electron to the cofactor FADH-. FADH- now in the possession of an extra electron gives the electron to the dimer to break the bond and repair the DNA. This transfer of the electron is done through the tunneling of the electron from the FADH to the dimer. Although the range of the tunneling is much larger than feasible in a vacuum, the tunneling in this scenario is said to be “superexchange-mediated tunneling,” and is possible do to the protein’s ability to boost the tunneling rates of the electron. The electron must tunnel to the dimer from the FADH molecule, because classically it would remain in its original position.

Quantum Vision Implications
Experiments have shown that the human eye is sensitive enough to detect a single photon. Single photon detection could lead to multiple different technologies. One area of development is in quantum communication and cryptography. The idea is to use a biometric system to measure the eye using only a small amount of points across the retina with random flashes of photons that “read” the retina and identify the individual. This biometric system would only allow a certain individual with a specific retinal map to decode the message. This message can not be decoded by anyone else unless the eavesdropper were to guess the proper map or could read the retina of the intended person of the message.

Vibration Theory of Olfaction
Olfaction, the sense of smell, can be broken down into two parts; the reception and detection of a chemical, and  how that detection is sent to and processed by the brain. This process of detecting an odorant is still under question. One theory named the “Shape Theory of Olfaction” suggests that certain olfactory receptors are triggered by certain shapes of chemicals and those receptors send a specific message to the brain. Another theory (based on quantum phenomena) suggests that the olfactory receptors detect the vibration of the molecules that reach them and the “smell” is due to different vibrational frequencies, this theory is aptly called the “Vibration Theory of Olfaction.”

The Vibration Theory of Olfaction, created in 1938 by Malcom Dyson but reinvigorated by Luca Turin in 1996, proposes that the mechanism for the sense of smell is due to G-protein receptors that detect molecular vibrations due to inelastic electron tunneling, tunneling where the electron loses energy, across molecules. In this process a molecule would fill a binding site with a G-protein receptor. After the binding of the chemical to the receptor, the chemical would then act as a bridge allowing for the electron to be transferred through the protein. As the electron transfers through the and  the that usually would be a barrier for the electrons and would lose its energy due the vibration of the molecule recently bound to the receptor, resulting in the ability to smell the molecule.

While the Vibration theory has some experimental proof of concept, there have been multiple controversial results in experiments. In some experiments, animals are able to distinguish smells between molecules of different frequencies and same structure other experiments show that people are unaware distinguishing smells due to distinct molecular frequencies. However, it has not been disproven, and has even been shown to be an effect in olfaction of animals other than humans such as flies and fish.