mdl24 wrote:
>> Hello,
>> In Roger Penrose's book, The Emperor's New Mind, it is asserted that certain
> types of crystal formation may include non-local quantum effects. It occured
> to me that perhaps quantum effects are involved in protein folding - it is
> impossible for a protein to try every possible conformation sequentially so
> perhaps several different conformations are attempted in paralell.
>> Is this at all possible?
No. Quantum entanglement of states of something as big as a protein
would
be destroyed very quickly at physiological temperature.
All the recent evidence is that folding happens quickly because
of either the magic of folding funnels (ie., many parallel folding
pathways that tend to converge into the same region of conformational
space) or the magic of enzymes (ie., chaperonins). No need for
all that tedious mucking about in quantum mechanics.
--
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-- /\ // /--
Dr. John Kuszewski || || / /||
johnk at speck.niddk.nih.gov || || / / ||
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My parents went to Zaire \/ / / || \/
and all I got |/__/| |
was this lousy retrovirus. /_________|
