ArticleACS central science2023
Electronic Energy Migration in Microtubules.
Article in ACS central science, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 60 citations in OpenAlex.
- What is quantum biology?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Quantum Information Flow in Microtubule Tryptophan Networks.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Self-referential processing as the biological switch between classical and quantum functioning of the brain.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Quantum theories of consciousness: a critical review of feasibility, philosophical sufficiency, and empirical testability.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- A Unified Model of Consciousness: Glycoprotein Patterns in Memory Processes and Quantum Entanglement.Current medicinal chemistry · 2026Article
- Transient entanglement in minimal open XXZ spin chains: a toy-model analogy for microtubule-inspired quantum biology.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Editorial: Quantum and quantum-like effects across neuroscience.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Conscious simultaneity with continuous motion: a measure-theoretic resolution of the hard problem.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Dynamic Equilibrium between the Fluorescent State of Tryptophan and Its Cation-Electron Ion Pair Governs Triplet State Population.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- Quantum Models of Consciousness from a Quantum Information Science Perspective.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The concept of biophotonic signaling in the human body and brain: rationale, problems and directions.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2025Review
- The quantum-classical complexity of consciousness and orchestrated objective reduction.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Conscious active inference II: Quantum orchestrated objective reduction among intraneuronal microtubules naturally accounts for discrete perceptual cycles.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2025Review
- A quantum microtubule substrate of consciousness is experimentally supported and solves the binding and epiphenomenalism problems.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- Non-linearity, complexity, and quantization concepts in biology.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Open quantum systems theory of ultraweak ultraviolet photon emissions: Revisiting Gurwitsch's onion experiment as a prototype for quantum biology.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2024Review
- Non-Equilibrium Quantum Brain Dynamics: Water Coupled with Phonons and Photons.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Consciousness and Energy Processing in Neural Systems.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- Unraveling the Photoionization Dynamics of Indole in Aqueous and Ethanol Solutions.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 7 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The repeating arrangement of tubulin dimers confers great mechanical strength to microtubules, which are used as scaffolds for intracellular macromolecular transport in cells and exploited in biohybrid devices. The crystalline order in a microtubule, with lattice constants short enough to allow energy transfer between amino acid chromophores, is similar to synthetic structures designed for light harvesting. After photoexcitation, can these amino acid chromophores transfer excitation energy along the microtubule like a natural or artificial light-harvesting system? Here, we use tryptophan autofluorescence lifetimes to probe energy hopping between aromatic residues in tubulin and microtubules. By studying how the quencher concentration alters tryptophan autofluorescence lifetimes, we demonstrate that electronic energy can diffuse over 6.6 nm in microtubules. We discover that while diffusion lengths are influenced by tubulin polymerization state (free tubulin versus tubulin in the microtubule lattice), they are not significantly altered by the average number of protofilaments (13 versus 14). We also demonstrate that the presence of the anesthetics etomidate and isoflurane reduce exciton diffusion. Energy transport as explained by conventional Förster theory (accommodating for interactions between tryptophan and tyrosine residues) does not sufficiently explain our observations. Our studies indicate that microtubules are, unexpectedly, effective light harvesters.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.