Quantum physics meets biology

TL;DR

This paper explores the emerging interdisciplinary field of quantum biology, highlighting how quantum physics principles are increasingly applied to understand complex biological phenomena, with recent experimental progress and future prospects.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the connections between quantum physics and biology, discussing criteria, current status, and experimental advances in quantum biology.

Findings

Identification of quantum effects in biological systems

Recent experimental demonstrations of quantum phenomena in biology

Discussion of limitations and future directions for quantum biology

Abstract

Quantum physics and biology have long been regarded as unrelated disciplines, describing nature at the inanimate microlevel on the one hand and living species on the other hand. Over the last decades the life sciences have succeeded in providing ever more and refined explanations of macroscopic phenomena that were based on an improved understanding of molecular structures and mechanisms. Simultaneously, quantum physics, originally rooted in a world view of quantum coherences, entanglement and other non-classical effects, has been heading towards systems of increasing complexity. The present perspective article shall serve as a pedestrian guide to the growing interconnections between the two fields. We recapitulate the generic and sometimes unintuitive characteristics of quantum physics and point to a number of applications in the life sciences. We discuss our criteria for a future quantum biology, its current status, recent experimental progress and also the restrictions that nature imposes on bold extrapolations of quantum theory to macroscopic phenomena.