GoldGoose
I've finally got some time to write a longer response.
Thank you for the close reading and the great catch on What is Life? I've added a correction post above (wish I could get it to appear directly under the abstract!). You're right that Schrödinger introduced the aperiodic crystal specifically as the physical basis of hereditary information, not as a wholesale claim about how living matter functions. I accidentally blended that with his broader discussions of order and coherence in biological systems, so thanks for the correction.
On capsid coherence and function:
Viral capsids are highly ordered nanostructures, and their symmetry supports collective vibrational normal modes, essentially "drumhead-like" mechanical oscillations of the shell. These modes have been directly measured in single virions using ultrafast pump–probe spectroscopy, high-speed AFM, terahertz scattering, and Brillouin/optomechanical methods. These measurements establish classical coherent vibrations across the capsid. Recent theoretical work (e.g., PNAS 2024 and the 2025 arXiv paper linked below) suggests that, in principle, these collective modes could transiently exhibit quantum-like coherence similar to what's been observed in a few other protein complexes of comparable size. If present, such coherence would be short-lived and is currently purely theoretical for viral capsids, with no experimental demonstration yet. If such short-lived coherence exists, it could potentially affect coordinated conformational changes or influence assembly pathways. The functional advantage would be faster, more accurate assembly, hundreds of protein subunits finding their correct positions more efficiently than through random diffusion alone, which would reduce the burden on host cell resources and shorten the time window when partially assembled capsids are vulnerable to degradation or immune detection. This doesn't mean viruses necessarily exploit quantum mechanisms, but capsids do provide unusually clean, symmetric biological structures where subtle coherence effects (classical or quantum) could be experimentally probed.
Some relevant recent references:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2420428122
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.05459
Regarding feasibility:
Level 1 experiments (D₂O/H₂O substitution kinetics) use standard enzymology techniques and could be implemented in well-equipped molecular biology labs with enzymology experience, though they're not commonly done in virology. Capsid vibrational spectroscopy builds on the same ultrafast methods used to study coherence in photosynthesis, and several biophysics groups have already applied these to viral particles, but the assays require specialized ultrafast-optics facilities or collaborators. Magnetic-field perturbation experiments draw from magnetoreception research and are technically feasible, but they need dedicated coils and controlled environments, so more of a specialized setup. Level 1 is fairly practical; Levels 2–3 push into frontier territory but remain grounded in existing techniques (depending on which specific experiments we're talking about).
I'm actually hoping to attempt some of the simpler Level 1/Level 2 experiments (or similar variants) myself over the next year or so, and I'm interested in technical feedback and potential collaborators. It would be great if this contest entry led to some real experiments!
