Entanglement in living organisms
Have you ever wondered how plants, fungi, and bacteria grow into complex shapes? They often appear to be intertwined with each other, a phenomenon called entanglement.
Entanglement is not only characteristic of quantum systems but is also a property of "living materials." It can make organisms stronger, stiffer, and more adaptable than unentangled ones.
Entanglement in non-living materials
Entanglement is well-studied in non-living materials, such as polymer chains or metal wires. It depends on the precise structure and geometry of the components. However, living organisms differ from non-living matter: they grow, develop, and die, and their components consist of many cells.
How do biological objects achieve entanglement?
A team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Rutgers University proposed a simple model of self-organization by analyzing multicellular yeast that grow into branched trees.
These yeasts, called snowflake yeast, were previously shown to have evolved entanglement in less than two years of laboratory experiments. This suggests that entanglement is easily achieved in living systems.
The researchers conducted experiments and computer simulations to study how snowflake yeast transform into entangled configurations and how these configurations affect the mobility and stability of yeast clusters.
- Snowflake yeast branches can grow into highly constrained and trapped configurations that cannot be untangled by simple movements.
- These configurations can only be destroyed or deformed by material failure, such as breaking of cell-to-cell connections or branch fracture.
- The researchers also found that yeast can form entanglements of virtually any geometry, unlike non-living materials, which require specific shapes and sizes.
The biophysicists developed a model of growth-driven entanglement. This means that the development of such biological systems depends on the time scale: if the branches grow long enough, they will eventually become entangled with each other.
To test the hypothesis, the researchers conducted experiments with different types of microbes, manipulating the time and geometry of their growth. They confirmed that entanglement via growth is controlled by the time scale, not the geometry of the branches.
The researchers concluded that entanglement via growth is a robust and universal mechanism for creating functional living materials. Entanglement could be used in engineering applications, such as the production of biomimetic materials or bioreactors.
This research is a significant step towards understanding how living organisms create complex structures and could lead to new applications in biotechnology and bioengineering.