Investigating dynamics of encounters of biomolecular partners: long-range driving forces versus Brownian collisions

Self-organization of living organisms is of an astonishing complexity and efficiency. More specifically, biological systems are the site of a huge number of specific chemical reactions that require the right biomolecule to be at the right place, in the right order and in a reasonably short time to sustain cellular function and ultimately cellular life. From a dynamic point of view, this raises the fundamental question of how biomolecules effectively find their target(s); in other words, what kinds of forces bring all these specific cognate partners together in an environment as dense and ionized as cellular micro-environments. Here, we explore the possibility that biomolecules interact through long-range interactions as they are predicted from first principles of electrodynamics; “long-range“ meaning that the mentioned interactions are effective over distances much larger than the typical dimensions of the molecules involved (i.e., larger than around 5 nm in biological systems). After discussing the theoretical background of long-range electromagnetic interactions, we investigate their possible detection in a biological context from experimental devices which are nowadays available.Non UBCUnreviewedAuthor affiliation: University of AlbertaResearche