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Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Invited lecture at Biomaterials Symposium, YUCOMAT 2010, Plaza Hotel, Herceg
Novi, Montenegro, 6-10 September 2010
The liquid crystalline organism
It’s been 18 years since I peered down the polarised light microscope and saw what no one else has seen before: a little fruit fly larva doing a psychedelic dance in all the colours of the rainbow. The polarizing light microscope technician was on leave, so we were left to our own devices. My colleague Michael Lawrence turned all the knobs this way and that until we got the best contrast. We had stumbled on a new configuration that optimised the detection of low level birefringence typical of biomolecules. But that alone would not have enabled us to see the dynamic liquid crystalline display of the little fruit fly larva.
For that to happen, all the molecules in the cells and tissues of its body must be aligned and moving coherently together. Not just the macromolecules but more importantly, the cell and tissue water must be an intrinsic part of the polarised liquid crystalline phase; the water forming dynamically coherent units with the macromolecules embedded and immersed in it. This water I call liquid crystalline water. The fruit fly larva is not unique, all living cells and organisms display themselves like that.
In the book named after the fruit fly larva [1], The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms, first published in 1993 and now in its 3rd enlarged 2008 edition, I present theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to support the idea that the organism is coherent to a high degree, even quantum coherent; and liquid crystalline water is an intrinsic part of the quantum molecular machines that power cells and organisms.
A quantum molecular machine transfers and transforms energy quantum mechanically at the molecular level without dissipation. This is exactly what motivates a lot of nanotechnology.
However, nanotechnologists still have much to learn from nature in how liquid crystalline water associated with nanomolecular machines is crucial to their functioning. Prof. Djuro Koruga is a pioneer among nanotechnologists in his multifaceted research on water and nanomaterials, and I thank him again for inviting me here to contribute to his vision.
In the short time available, I shall describe some recent evidence in support of the view that liquid crystalline water forms dynamically coherent units with enzyme proteins and DNA and then see how that might explain the living state.
A fully referenced and illustrated version of this lecture plus power point presentation is available for download here
Read other reports about water and organisms here
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