Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili

The principle that mutations occur randomly with respect to the direction of evolutionary change has been challenged by the phenomenon of adaptive mutations. There is currently no entirely satisfactory theory to account for how a cell can selectively mutate certain genes in response to environmental signals. However, spontaneous mutations are initiated by quantum events such as the shift of a single proton (hydrogen atom) from one site to an adjacent one. We consider here the wave function describing the quantum state of the genome as being in a coherent linear superposition of states describing both the shifted and unshifted protons. Quantum coherence will be destroyed by the process of decoherence in which the quantum state of the genome becomes correlated (entangled) with its surroundings. Using a very simple model we estimate the decoherence times for protons within DNA and demonstrate that quantum coherence may be maintained for biological time-scales. Interaction of the coherent genome wave function with environments containing utilisable substrate will induce rapid decoherence and thereby destroy the superposition of mutant and non-mutant states. We show that this accelerated rate of decoherence may significantly increase the rate of production of the mutated state.