In Science, vol. 275, 7. March 1997 there was a very interesting article about the work of Barton and her group. Barton et al have done several experiments between 1993-1997 related to the conductivity properties of DNA double helix. The conclusion of Barton et al is that DNA double helix has the ability to do chemistry at distance: "A DNA molecule with a chemical group artificially tethered to one end appears to mediate a chemical change far down the helix, causing a patch of damaged DNA to be mended.".
What seems to occur is flow of electron current along DNA with very small resistance. Typically the experiments involve electron donator and acceptor separated by a long distance along DNA. When acceptor is radiated it goes to excited state and an electron current flows from donator to acceptor as a consequence. Standard wisdom tells that this should not be possible. The current should flow by quantum tunneling between adjacent building units of DNA and it should diminish exponentially with distance. For proteins this is known to be the case. In experiments however no distance dependence was observed.
There exist a theory which assumes that the current could flow along the interior of double DNA, that is the region between the bases of strand and complementary strand. The electron would be delocalized in bases rings these rings would form a stack along DNA. The current would flow by tunneling also now but the tunneling probability would be so large that distance dependence would be weak. The critics of Barton argue that this model cannot explain all the experiments of Barton and that the model is not in accordance with basic organic chemistry and biology: ordinary sun light should have rather drastic effects on us. Barton admits that they do not understand the mechanism.
The external world relative to the body can be regarded as a parallel and larger spacetime sheet, which is surface in the 8-dimensional space. The tiny wormholes connecting different spacetime sheets are light and form Bose Einstein (BE) condensates and, being the only the communication tool between me and the external world, must be the royal road to the understanding of living systems if TGD is correct. Actually, these BE condensates represent what might be called a universal nervous system. One application of the concept is a model of nerve pulse and EEG. TGD predicts also the generation of coherent states of photons and gravitons and microtubules are excellent candidates for quantum antennas. Brain as a neuron society metaphor leads to a detailed suggestion for the quantum correlates of the sensory qualia. p-Adic length scale hypothesis predicts a series of characteristic length scales and these length scales seem to be present in biosystems.
TGD suggests a possible explanation of phenomenon in terms of closely related concepts of exotic atom and charged wormhole. The concept of exotic atom in turn relies on the concept of many sheeted spacetime. Exotic atom is formed when one or more outer valence electrons of ordinary atom are dropped from atomic spacetime sheet to a 'larger' spacetime sheet, now spacetime sheet with a form of DNA helix. As a consequence, charged wormholes feeding the em gauge flux to the larger spacetime sheet are also generated. Elecrons in larger spacetimesheet could be delocalized and this could lead to a smaller ground state energy. What is important is that the electrons on the larger spacetime sheet move effectively in empty spacetime and therefore electric current can flow freely without resistance.
Charged wormholes could provide also a mechanism of superconductivity: photons are replaced with the excitations of wormhole BE condensate in this mechanicm. It is however too early to say whether super conductivity is really in question and even whether this superconductivity mechanism really works.
In the experimental arrangements of Barton typically donors and acceptors of electrons are Rh and Ru atoms. Both have 5s unpaired electron and this electron would drop on the larger spacetime sheet from the atomic spacetime sheet and induce electric current. Some colleagues of Barton did not oberve the effect when using organic molecules as donors. A possible explanation is that these molecules are such that their valence electrons cannot drop on lower spacetime sheet (it is not energetically favourable, they could be paired, for instance).
Articles about exotic atoms, charged wormholes and the related mechanism of super conductivity articles can be found in my homepage.