ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

140 Protein Conformational Dynamics
(Athenstaedt, 1974). An electret effect accounts for specific properties such as
anti-blood clotting in biomaterials and the non-stickiness of teflon. Sources of
polarization or charge storage in macromolecules are dipoles, ionic space charges,
or ordered surface water.
Electret materials are piezoelectric (Gubkin and Sovokin 1960). Piezoelectric
materials change their shape or conformation in response to electrical stimuli, and
change their electrical state in response to mechanical stimuli. Koppenol (1980)
has shown that the dipole moment orientation of an enzyme changes in concert
with its functional activity. Electrets are also “pyroelectric,” in that any change in
temperature alters the electrical and conformational characteristics of the
molecule. The permanent electric dipole moment of pyroelectric bodies results
from the parallel alignment of elementary fixed dipole moments. Any change in
temperature modifies the length of the pyroelectric body and alters its elementary
dipole moments (pyroelectric effect). In the same way, any mechanical change in
length or any deformation of a pyroelectric body produces a modification of its
dipole moment (piezoelectric effect). Thus every pyroelectric body is at the same
time piezoelectric. The two requisites for such behavior are an electric property
which causes a permanent dipole moment in the molecules and a morphological
property that favors a parallel alignment. Microtubules and other cytoskeletal
structures appear to be appropriately designed electret, pyroelectric, piezolectric
devices.
The electret state within bone has been well studied and is able to store large
amounts of polarization of the order of 10 -8 coulombs per square centimeter
(Mascarenhas, 1974, 1975). The limit of charge separation (equivalent to maximal
information density) has been calculated (Gutman, 1986) to be about 10 17
electronic charges per cubic centimeter, while there may be about 10 21 total
molecules per cubic centimeter. One cubic centimeter of parallel microtubules
densely arrayed 100 nanometers apart contains about 10 17 tubulin subunits and
therefore may contain 10 17 dipoles equivalent to the maximal density of charge!
Electret and related properties can impart interesting and potentially useful
properties to biomolecules including cytoskeletal polymers. Among these are the
potential capacity to support the propagation of conformational waves such as
solitons.
6.7 Solitons/Davydov
Important biological events involve spatial transfer of energy along protein
molecules. One well known example is the contractile curling of myosin heads in
muscle contraction, fueled by the hydrolysis of ATP molecules. These quanta of
biological energy are equivalent to 0.43 electron volts, only 20 times greater than
background energy and insufficient to excite molecular electronic states.
Consequently, under usual conditions biological systems do not emit photons.
This implied to Davydov (1977) during the 1970’s that ATP hydrolysis energy is
transferred by vibrational excitations of certain atomic groups within proteins.
Davydov focused on the alpha helix regions of proteins and identified the “amide
1” (carbon-oxygen double bond) stretch vibration of the peptide group as the most
likely “basket” in which energy may be carried. His selection was based on the
“quasi-periodic,” or crystal-like arrangement of amide 1 bonds, their low
vibrational energy (0.21 electron volts-half the energy of ATP hydrolysis) and
their marked dipole moment (0.3 Debye). According to linear analysis, energy
transported by this means should spread out from the effects of dispersion and
rapidly become disorganized and lost as a source of biological action. However
Davydov analyzed nonlinear aspects of the amide 1 stretch and concluded that
amide 1 vibrations are retroactively coupled to longitudinal soundwaves of the