The physical principles underpinning self-organization in plants

• Published in: Progress in biophysics and molecular biology Vol. 123; pp. 48 - 73
• Main Authors: Turner, Philip, Nottale, Laurent
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01-01-2017
• Subjects: Biophysical Phenomena; Plants - metabolism; Quantum Theory
• ISSN: 0079-6107; 1873-1732
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2016.09.003

Based on laboratory based growth of plant-like structures from inorganic materials, we present new theory for the emergence of plant structure at a range of scales dictated by levels of ionization, which can be traced directly back to proteins transcribed from genetic code and their interaction with external sources of charge in real plants.
Beyond a critical percolation threshold, individual charge induced quantum potentials merge to form a complex, interconnected geometric web, creating macroscopic quantum potentials, which lead to the emergence of macroscopic quantum processes. The assembly of molecules into larger, ordered structures operates within these charge-induced coherent bosonic fields, acting as a structuring force in competition with exterior potentials. Within these processes many of the phenomena associated with standard quantum theory are recovered, including quantization, non-dissipation, self-organization, confinement, structuration conditioned by the environment, environmental fluctuations leading to macroscopic quantum decoherence and evolutionary time described by a time dependent Schrödinger-like equation, which describes models of bifurcation and duplication.
The work provides a strong case for the existence of quintessence-like behaviour, with macroscopic quantum potentials and associated forces having their equivalence in standard quantum mechanics. The theory offers new insight into evolutionary processes in structural biology, with selection at any point in time, being made from a wide range of spontaneously emerging potential structures (dependent on conditions), which offer advantage for a specific organism. This is valid for both the emergence of structures from a prebiotic medium and the wide range of different plant structures we see today.