Xenon Anesthesia and Nuclear Spin Effects in Chiral Systems

TL;DR

This paper proposes a spin-dependent mechanism involving chiral-induced spin selectivity to explain xenon anesthesia effects, linking nuclear spin to biological function without requiring quantum coherence.

Contribution

It introduces a kinetic model connecting nuclear spin-dependent permeability in chiral systems to anesthetic potency, grounded in the CISS effect and biological ligand-receptor interactions.

Findings

The model reproduces reported nuclear spin dependence of xenon anesthesia.

It suggests spin-dependent charge organization influences biological function.

The framework operates effectively at physiological temperatures without quantum coherence.

Abstract

A general mechanism for anesthetic function is not fully understood. Similarly, the mechanism by which xenon, a chemically inert noble gas, can produce anesthetic effects remains ambiguous. However, a previous study reported a surprisingly strong nuclear-spin-dependent variation in anesthetic potency in mice, although no rigorous molecular mechanism was proposed. This perspective examines that observation and explores a potential connection to the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect, a phenomenon that can account for spin-dependent processes in chiral systems. Here we propose a mechanism that links spin-dependent charge organization with chiral molecular systems through a kinetic model that reproduces the reported nuclear spin dependence of xenon anesthesia. The model is based on the nuclear spin-dependent permeability of isotopes through homochiral media, which modulates biological function through ligand-receptor binding in analogy with the Hill-Langmuir equation. Unlike mechanisms that require long-range quantum coherence, our framework remains robust under physiological, room-temperature conditions because it relies on the intrinsic stability of the CISS effect in dissipative biological environments. Our analysis motivates further experimental investigation of spin-dependent processes, not limited to anesthesia, in complex living systems where chirality is pervasive.