Thursday, September 18, 2014

DNAs humble beginnings as nutrient carrier; humble - really?

I received from Ulla an interesting link about the indications that DNA may have had rather humble beginnings: it would have served as a nutrient carrier. Each nuclteotide in the phosphate-deoxiribose backbone corresponds to a phosphate and nutrient refers to phosphate assumed to carry metabolic energy in high energy phosphate bond.

In AXP, X=M,D,T the number of phosphates is 1,2,3. When ATP transforms to ADP it gives away one phosphate to the acceptor molecule which receives thus metabolic energy. For DNA there is one phosphate per nucleotide and besides A also T, G, and C are possible.


The attribute "humble" reflects of course the recent view about the role of nutrients and metabolic energy. It is just ordered energy what they are carrying. TGD view about life suggest that "humble" is quite too humble an attribute.

  1. The basic notion is potentially conscious information. This is realized as negentropic entanglement for which entanglement probabilities must be rational numbers (or possibly also algebraic numbers in some algebraic extension of rationals) so that their p-adic norms make sense. The entanglement entropy associated with the density matrix characterizing entanglement is defined by a modification of Shannon formula by replacing the probabilities in the argument of the logarithm with their p-adic norms and finding the prime for which the entropy is smallest. The entanglement entropy defined in this manner can be and is negative unlike the usual Shannon entropy. The interpretation is as information associated with entanglement. Second law is not violated since the information is 2-particle property whereas as Shannon entropy is single particle property characterizing average particle.

    The interpretation of negentropic entanglement is as potentially conscious information: the superposition of pairs of states would represent abstraction or rule whose instances would be the pairs of states. The large the number of pairs, the higher the abstraction level.

  2. The consistency with standard quantum measurement theory gives strong constraints on the form of the negentropic entanglement. The key notion is that if density matrix is proportional to unit matrix, standard measurement theory says nothing about the outcome of measurement and entanglement can be preserved. Otherwise the reduction occurs to one of the states involved. This situation could correspond to negentropic 2-particle entanglement. For several subsystems each sub-system-complement pair would have similar density matrix. There is also a connection with dark matter identified as phases with non-standard value heff=n×h of Planck constant. n defines the dimension of the density matrix. Thus dark matter at magnetic flux quanta would make living matter living.

    In 2-particle case the entanglement coefficients form a unitary matrix typically involved with quantum computing systems. DNA-cell membrane system is indeed assumed to form a topological quantum computer in TGD framework. The braiding of magnetic flux tubes connecting nucleotides with lipids of the cell membrane defines topological quantum computer program and its time evolution is induced by the flow of lipids forming a 2-D liquid crystal. This flow can be induced by nearby events and also by nerve pulses.

    Sidestep: Actually pairs of flux tubes are involved to make high temperature super-conductivity possible with members of Cooper pairs at flux tubes with same or opposite directions of spins depending on the direction of magnetic field and thus in spin S=0 or S=1 state. For large value of Planck constant heff=n×h the spin-spin interaction energy is large and could correspond in living matter to energies of visible light.


  3. Negentropy Maximization Principle (NMP) is the basic variational principle of TGD inspired theory of consciousness. NMP states that the gain of negentropic entanglement is maximal in state function reduction so that negentropic entanglement can be stable.

  4. NMP guarantees that during evolution by quantum jumps recreating the Universe (and sub-Universes assignable to causal diamonds (CDs)) the information resources of Universe increase. Just to irritate skeptics I have spoken about "Akashic records". Akashic records would form books in a universal library and could be read by interaction free quantum measurement preserving entanglement but generating secondary generating state function reductions providing conscious information about Akashic records defining also a model of self.

    Sidestep: Self can be identified as a sequence of state function for which only first quantum is non-trivial at second boundary of CD whereas other quantum jumps induce change of superposition of CDs at the opposite boundary and states at them). Essentially a discretized counterpart of unitary time development would be in question. This allows to understand how the arrow of psychological time emerges and why the contents of sensory experience is about so narrow a time interval. Act of free will corresponds to the first state function reduction at opposite boundary and thus involves change of the arrow of psychological time at some level of self hierarchy: this prediction is consistent with the Libet's findings that conscious decision implies neural activity initiated before the decision ("before" with respect to geometric time, not subjective time).


In this framework the phosphates could be seen as ends of magnetic flux tubes connecting DNA to cell membrane and mediating negentropic entanglement with the cell membrane. DNA as topological quantum computer vision conforms with the interpretation DNA-cell membrane system as "Akaschic records". This role of DNA-cell membrane system would have emerged already before the metabolic machinery, whose function would be to transfer the entanglement of nutrient molecules with some bigger system X to that between biomolecules and X. Some intriguing numerical co-incidences suggest that X could be gravitational Mother Gaia and flux tubes mediating gravitational interaction with nutrient molecules and gravitational Mother Gaia could be in question. This brings in mind Penrose's proposal about the role of quantum gravity. TGD is indeed a theory of quantum gravity predicting that gravitation is quantal in astroscopic length scales.

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