Solitons in Biology and Possible Role of Bisolitons in High-T_c Superconductivity

Abstract

Many processes in living organisms are associated with a space propagation of energy or electrons along protein molecules. Investigations carried out at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kiev starting from 1973 have shown that the effective transport of energy or electrons is due to certain properties of excited states of alpha-helical protein molecules in which peptide groups are arranged as three parallel quasiperiodic chains [1]. Peptide groups have a constant electric dipole moment of 3.5 Debye; therefore they form a potential well capable of retaining an extra electron. The overlap of wave functions of the extra electron and the resonance dipole-dipole interaction of amide-I vibrations of the neighboring peptide groups, J, explains the collective nature of the corresponding excitations. Quantized, these excitations have effective mass m = ħ²/2a ² J and are called quasi-particles.