[dekhn]

That work is highly speculative (I've studied, but not as my primary work, enzyme kinetics and reaction mechanisms). Finding holes in transition state theory isn't hard and I don't see that it's necessary to invoke tunneling protons to come up with better theories. Even the physical experiments cited in the Ball article, are pretty speculative, and aren't accepted by the mainstream.

I find it pretty amusing, because I proposed tunneling protons in a journal club once, but got laughed down by all the physicists who said "that's silly, proton mass is too high, so probability of proton tunneling is basically zero" (they were being overconfident).

The only real work in this area, which is to say, work that is heavily backed up with data, is the work on quantum mechanisms in photosynthesis: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2010/05/10/untangling-quantum-enta... This work, since it has a huge amount of high quality experimental work, is considered pretty solid.

[theophrastus]

And i had a committee member forbid me from including quantum effects in the modeling of my enzyme. He said it was "too speculative". All science is speculative, until it isn't. You would be well served to reduce your "highly speculative" filters. That is, continue to propose your interesting new chains of causation. If there were braver people than me (which shouldn't be hard) then perhaps understanding enzyme mechanisms would be further along by now.

[dekhn]

People need to back up their speculations with evidence.

Also, did you push back against the committee member? Show data? At least create a plausible doubt in their mind?

The reason enzyme mechanisms are so hard to study is that getting proteins into a state where you can capture data from that femtosecond where the reaction occurs is hard. Recent improvements in free electron lasers for fourth generation synchrotrons will greatly improve this.

[deepnet]

Roger Scrunton, Manchester Uni, Quantum Effects in Biological Catalysis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnxmHlbtJDI

[mathgenius]

The ammonia maser uses proton tunnelling.. the guy who invented that also got "laughed out of the room". Well, it's probably a different pressure / temperature than enzyme kinetics, but those physicists, they like to own the quantum and not let anyone else have it. :-)

[jeffwass]

When I studied undergraduate quantum mechanics (physics dept, many years ago) one of our homework problems involved oscillation of the ammonia atom. Ie, the three hydrogen atoms form a triangle, and the nitrogen atom is in a superposition of states above or below the hydrogen plane.

Iirc, given some estimate of the relative potential energy barrier formed by the hydrogen atoms, we showed that the nitrogen atom would effectively oscillate between the up and down states and calculated the frequency of oscillation.

[Retric]

Interesting, I have heard it suggested that tunneling is one of those things that's clearly going on, but not necessarily relevant. Much like how relativity is required for sufficiently accurate solar system models, but you can generally ignore it.

[dekhn]

That's possible, but where is the evidence to show it? I'm not saying tunnelling isn't occuring (the laws of physics permit it) but if it's not relevant, who cares?