Entering the Unknown Regions of Life

The author describes the main stages of his concept of life during the last 20 years. The first model /Fig. 1/ was essentially a macroscopic one, yet the connection between metabolism and electronic processes was taken into account in it. The role they might play in organisms has been inferred from the data on semiconductivity of proteins, nucleic acids and porphyrin compounds. The further deductions from this model were surprizing: electromagnetic nature of life and consciousness, electrostasis, bioplasma, and laser effects in biosystems. In 1984, the present author suggested a model that was enhanced with quantum interdependencies. It has been called "the quantum seam of life" /Fig. 2/. According to it, and contrary to our knowledge from the textbooks of biology, the very nature of life is quantum-mechanical. In the above article, which was written in February 1988, the author ascribes special significance to the submolecular realm of living systems: more precisely to the intermolecular one. /Fig. 3/. The molecules, even if packed very densely, leave a lot of free intermolecular space. It is argued that the life was brought about in the vacancies between the orbitals of organic moleoules. There the interorganismal transfer of information is best, because all the intermolecular spaces are interconnected. In view of this, life, consciousness, and information are electromagnetic in nature and indistinguishable