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In the Lab #2: Quantum Bio Explorations
Recorded: Dec. 12, 2024 Duration: 1:06:28Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. Hello, hello.
Is this thing on yes whoa how about that first try
amazing i'm so excited for this day me too happy uh happy thursday aaron how are you
Erin, how are you?
Happy Thursday.
Doing great.
Yes.
Yeah.
Exciting things in person where I'm at right now down at Tulum Crypto Fest and so many
cool things happening online, which we'll be able to dive into today.
And overall, just amazing excitement and conversations happening everywhere.
figuring out what the space is going to be, but we should totally do like a little,
you know, what's going on in the world, the DSi update to start. Cause I got to say,
Erin, you go to all the coolest DSi parties. I've had to take it a little bit slower recently,
but my health is starting to boost back up and able to make it back out to some of the different things.
And right now, there's just so much DSI excitement everywhere.
So I feel like trying to make it to all of the coolest DSI parties is going to become harder and harder,
especially as more DSI projects keep accelerating forward and upward and doing amazing things.
No, I have to say it feels like drinking from a fire hose right now.
And that's why I'm very excited to announce the formation of Let's Clone Erin DAO.
This is a DAO that's going to try to clone Erin so she can go to every Desai event and party.
I feel like we also need a clone of you, Stanley.
So more clones to come.
Maybe that's actually really the overall objective of in the lab.
We're working towards these clones.
I love it.
And who knows?
Maybe we can make kind of some digital twin stuff,
part of how we interact with our guests and with our audience.
Actually, Aaron, we'll get off to a start and say hi to literally the coolest project in the
whole space, Quantum BioDAO. We'll say hi in just a second. But yeah, later too, I will invite my
friend Zach up, and he is actually working on a science Stanley AI cartoon character with me.
All right. So step one into this whole cloning objective. Love it.
Yeah, absolutely. We'll get to the wet lab later.
But on that note, let's let's say hi to the founder of one of the coolest projects in the space
and one that is really bridging the gap between kind of the world of theory
and the world of biological implementation.
QuantumBioDao, welcome to the program.
I'm Clarice.
I'm one of the co-founders.
Jeff, say hi.
He's also from the Quantum BioDAO.
Hi everybody.
And thanks for having us here.
We're super excited to talk about what quantum biology is
and ways that we want to use Desai
to get really cool stuff done.
Oh, I can't wait to dive in.
And I know you guys actually have some cool activities
like going on just this week, right?
With a token?
That's correct.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no.
We have our token launch.
It's happening right now at launchpad.bio.xyz.
And it's going to be running for the next three days, basically.
Wow.
Well, for everyone listening, we're going to keep mentioning this because we want to drive
attention to this great raise.
And man, remember when the bio XYZ people were just kind of,
uh, talking about the idea to see like such incredible, um, cohorts, uh, going through
their processes is just so exciting. Um, you know, uh, but before we're getting to that and what,
what incredible stuff you guys are going to do with, with that, um, with that support, um,
this is a program we're calling like the Scientist Lab. It's like a
Inside the Actor's Studio kind of variation. So very much like if it's okay, like want to
learn about you guys as like humans and scientists too. Is there any chance you guys might be willing
to give a little bit of an intro and share kind of like, you know, how you two came to be the
humans like running such an incredibly interesting and unique project.
Maybe Jeff can tell the story of how we met.
Sure. Yeah. I mean, so I mean, I didn't originally have any background in quantum biology.
I'm trained as a philosopher and I started an independent research institute called Leverage that identifies
fields in science and technology that are stuck and could maybe be caused to break through.
As part of that, ended up meeting Clarice, who reached out to us and got a chance to learn about
the fantastic area of quantum biology.
And we had to, you know, go through and essentially vet it,
assess, see whether the science was solid.
We concluded the answer was yes.
And then we had to decide what project we thought or what was the way to advance the field.
And, you know, we talked to other people
who ended up coming to the same conclusion,
but basically concluded that Clarice had laid out a very clear and compelling research path that involved building microscopes
that would let us actually read the quantum signature off of proteins inside cells to prove
once and for all that, in in fact cells are running on quantum.
And so that was, you know, just extremely interesting.
And as I learned more about it, I realized that there was a really large potential here,
not only scientifically, but also in terms of human health.
It's, you know, mostly we're concerned with weak magnetic fields. These are
things that have effects in biology in many different cell types, many different organisms,
but people don't know how they work. They don't know the underlying mechanism. The reason they
don't know the underlying mechanism is that apart from a few edge cases, most of the time,
the underlying mechanism within known physics is a quantum one
and people haven't wanted to engage with that.
But, you know,
there's my belief that there shouldn't be areas of science
that people can't understand.
Clarice agrees.
And we spent a bunch of time
looking at how the value, how the science
and how the potential applications of the field could be communicated.
We ended up coming across decentralized science through connection made by a friend of mine,
and we met the bio team's bio protocol.
That's the, it's like the Y Combinator group
or the accelerator that's helping all of these bio DAOs to launch.
We thought their team was great and decided that, yeah,
I mean, maybe revolutionary science needs revolutionary mechanisms of funding.
And so we dove in and it's been a great experience so far.
Oh my goodness. And I like to say that I think that the DCI community is much more
tuned to the future than traditional science so I think we were very lucky to to launch our DAO
we were very lucky to launch our DAO
in a time where DSAI is going up.
And we hope to contribute to that trend too
with the work that we do in the DAO.
I got to say...
Go ahead, Ernst.
Yeah, I was just going to say,
I feel like in addition to DSAI timing
being pretty awesome
right now there's also a lot of conversation about quantum uh possibilities right now just
with google's kind of recent announcements and and public releases and so i feel like this is
kind of perfect timing for you guys to be really taking that step
forward into the world in a more public way.
2025 is according to the UN, the year of quantum.
And so we are, we, we couldn't, couldn't agree more.
It's been, been really amazing seeing things line up and I couldn't,
couldn't agree more.
I think we'll have some of our first really impactful quantum
products over the next couple of years. And it's so exciting. And then, yeah, I got to ask,
because I am so curious. Clarice, are you kind of originally from a biology background or quantum?
No. Yeah. I'm an experimental quantum physicist.
So I did my PhD in a field known as quantum sensing.
So in fact, you can mathematically prove
that if you use a quantum object,
like an electron, as a sensor,
your measurement is improved.
In other words, the sensor quantumness
enhances the measurement.
After I finished my PhD, I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
I spent one year teaching, and then I started applying for postdoc positions.
And by chance, I ended up in a chemistry lab.
It turns out that because I was immersed into this chemistry environment, I noticed something.
environment, I noticed something. There are electrons in proteins that sense magnetic fields
in pretty much the same way that the technological quantum sensors that I worked with during my PhD
are sensing magnetic fields. So chemists have known this phenomenon for decades.
They don't call it quantum sensing,
but I think that I came to realize
that the two communities were talking about the same thing.
And the cool part about all this
is that this type of sensitivity of magnetic fields from proteins,
there's correlative evidence that that is influencing biology big time, that weak magnetic fields can alter from how birds
migrate following the magnetic field of the earth to the whole machinery of the cell.
In fact, weak magnetic fields have been shown to up and down regulate
how fast cells multiply, how much DNA gets repaired, how much oxidative stress your cell
is producing, the cytoskeleton configuration of your cell. And
all of this is consistent with having a quantum origin,
that is, the interaction of living matter with magnetic fields
seem to be quantum in nature.
And what we want then is to sort of control deterministically
this endogenous degree of liberdade para actuar na
biologia de uma forma radical, nova.
Então,
agora, isso é completamente
ficção científica, mas um dia, você
pode imaginar ter uma aplicação no seu
celular, e depois você vai lá e
diz, hoje, eu preciso de ajuda com a
cura de ameaça. Você clica um botão e o
celular produz o campo magnético que
você precisa para fazer a cura de ameaça. Então, esse é o tipo de coisas que wound healing. You click a button and your cell phone produces the magnetic field that you need to do wound healing, right? So this is the type of things that we want to advance. And in order
to do that, you need the tools or if you will, you need the code book that is provided to you
by quantum biology on how to rationally produce magnetic fields to actuate in biology for function.
Wow. And, you know, in terms of the guidebook you're talking about, I think there's
something you said I found so interesting, you know, the challenge of
taking language that existed in your field of quantum sensing and then realizing that
biologists had seen this phenomenon too, maybe under a different name. So I have to say,
no, it's so beautiful. And as lucky as perhaps quantum biodao is to be part of this rising wave
of desai, it feels like we're very lucky to be able
to tell such a cool scientific story. I am so curious to dig in a little more too.
My original training was in quantum informatics and then kind of repurposed to bioinformatics
after becoming passionate at one point about medicine.
And I do remember hearing about the idea of like Penrose consciousness, which was the idea that there could be some like quantum entanglement in certain like structures in the brain.
Is that related to this concept or?
this concept or?
I mean, it's related in that it postulates a connection between quantum and biology.
But, I mean, and this is not just our view, but the scientists that we know and have spoken to, the Penrose hypothesis in particular
doesn't seem very plausible on a biological level.
And we could try to talk about the physics side,
but it certainly is the case that it,
you know, we don't understand a lot
of what's happening in biology. And so looking to see where
we can find other ways to explain what's going on seems like a good idea. Oh, totally. And I
apologize. I wasn't trying to like be like, oh, that's quantum bio and you guys are quantum bio
must be the same thing. But I genuinely was curious because had looked into the idea of Penrose consciousness at one point.
And but myself also like had a little skepticism, which apparently is controversial.
But yeah, I mean, I can the I mean, we're certainly interested in which like what is it in the brain that depends on quantum phenomena? So for example,
earlier today, we were in a conversation with Anders Sandberg, who's a scientist that studies
whole brain emulation, for example. So if you're, if you're trying to do a whole brain emulation, you're essentially trying to create a more or less one to one sort of computerized one to one
copy or computerized duplicate of the brain in a way that would actually think if you did this for
yourself would think the way that you think. And so it matters then for that, is there anything quantum that you that you need to
copy? And we talked about a bunch of different things. Consciousness is notably one of the
hardest areas, apparently, for scientists to be able to approach. But our hope is that it's
possible to lay down like, if that's's 10 steps away or five steps away,
we're trying to go one step at a time so that we can be sure the science is totally solid
and then actually answer the relevant questions.
Oh, it's just so cool.
And, I mean, it seems, too, like like if it seems like you guys are positing there may or could be kind of intercellular quantum informatics happening.
That's that's so fascinating and could provide for all kinds of like, you know, inputs to consciousness is kind of cool, too.
Aaron, remember last week we were talking to Amelie about the gap junction proteins?
Yeah, definitely.
Because I wonder, is that maybe part of what you guys could be getting?
I don't know if you've seen the gap junction.
No, tell us more. Tell us more.
Oh, well, they're kind of like the intercellular portals. So they allow metabolic compounds to move between cells. And then there's a lot of hypothesis that they could be part of like a network that actually, like some of the things you were talking about, like wound healing or injury recovery, like that could be almost like a programmable layer of biology. I think
a lot of people suspect that the gap junctions play a role in those systems.
Very cool. So I don't know specifically about gap junctions, but I think that we believe that there
is an underlying quantumness that is sort of widespread, possibly present in
all your cells and really helping your cells function from at a very basal level. Right. So
again, I don't know exactly about those proteins, but I just want to make the point that we believe
proteins but I just want to make the point that we believe quantum design
biology is not one-off occurrence we believe that it's it should pop in many
different places and with much more profound consequences that people are
currently considering
it's just such an exciting hypothesis and as you can see I'm going crazy like oh could this protein
have some quantum informatics could this protein have some quantum informatics so I will hopefully
if it's okay maybe send you a couple of my favorite proteins yes yes. So we love proteins that, for example, sense magnetic fields.
People cannot really predict which proteins are going to be magnetosensitive, but people usually
find out that proteins that are magnetosensitive are usually implicated in redox biology,
in the biology of give and take elections. So some of our favorite proteins are redox-like proteins.
But send your favorite proteins to us
and we will have a good look at them.
I love that call to action.
Send your favorite proteins.
That's amazing.
Well, soon enough, I mean, it probably will be a whole new world in terms of experimentally,
you know, actually looking at some of these proteins and these phenomena. Is that anything
you guys are thinking of doing with this current BioXYZ grant? Are you going to be doing anything
experimental with quantum proteins? Because if so, I want to visit. with this current BioXYZ grant? Are you going to be doing anything experimental
with quantum proteins?
Because if so, I want to visit.
Grace, you should tell them about the microscope.
So, okay.
So, yes, there's tons of experimentation
that we plan to do, right?
So, our final goal is going to be to learn how to modulate
your cell function using weak magnetic fields and there are several steps on the way right
the first step is try to look at proteins inside cells and really measure for how long those proteins can be quantum.
Because there's actually a timescale argument here that you need those proteins to remain,
like electrons inside those proteins to remain in a quantum state for long enough for each to matter.
Here, long enough is still very short.
It's from nanoseconds to microseconds, but that's already way longer than people think that quantumness can survive inside cells. novel novel instruments drive science forward and we are building a glorified
microscope that can look at the quantum signature of those proteins and let me
tell you the way that we do this so this is true both for electrons inside a lot
of proteins and also for technological quantum sensors, just like the ones I worked with during
my PhD, it turns out that the amount of light that they emit, for example, the fluorescence of proteins,
the amount of light that they emit is a function of the quantum state of the electrons. That is,
by just looking at fluorescence intensity, you can infer the quantum state of particular elections.
So if we can count photons in a very good way and with nanosecond time resolution,
we might follow those quantum states inside cells, check for how long they live,
for how long they live, and importantly, learn how to influence them.
and importantly, learn how to influence them.
So that...
Did I speak about the scale shift?
No, right, Jeff?
No, but please do.
I am literally on the edge of my seat right now, you guys.
Okay.
So the profound proposition of quantum biology is that there's a scale shift that happens whereby things
that happen at very tiny land scales and very fast time scales end up having a macroscopic effect on
how your cells work right so this is what one day we will hope to observe in the lab. How those fast phenomena involving,
I'll throw out a technical term here,
don't be discouraged by it.
We want to see how fast electron spin superpositions
might be at play to influence macroscopic cellular function
because we think that those fast, tiny processes can actually
have a big effect on how your cell is working,
and that there's this new lever that we can use
to tweak cell function using this quantum knowledge.
to tweak cell function using this quantum knowledge.
You know, I believe it.
One of my dear friends and colleagues did work in modeling quantum spin lattices
and phase transitions on quantum spin lattices.
And it is some heavier language too, but I'm hoping this will actually be a space where, you know,
we can keep it, you know, focused on the narrative of science and how important it is to look in these really exciting directions that traditional science might not go down.
But I think it's kind of fun too to kind of pick up that rock and show everyone what's under it a little bit.
that rock and show everyone what's under it a little bit.
So when we say spin, we're kind of actually talking
about the physical how a particle is spinning,
but not really, right?
Because there's some extra quantum stuff going on, isn't there?
Yes.
So spin is a fundamental property of matter,
and it's as fundamental as like mass and charge.
In the same way that mass measures how an object interacts
with the gravitational field, charge measures how an object
interacts with an electric field, spin measures how an electron
interacts with a magnetic field. Spin is a misnomer.
There is nothing that is actually spinning.
And it just tells us that different, for example, electrons have spin in
the same way that electrons have charge. Different spin states of an electron interact differently
with magnetic fields. And this is the idea. There is no classical analog to spin
classical analog to spin.
And yeah, and this is part of the quantum recipe.
And we think that electrons,
and in particular electron spin superpositions,
are behind how biology responds
to tiny, tiny magnetic fields.
Oh, that is such a good answer.
And can you just like do a podcast
where you explain quantum stuff?
I would listen to every episode.
Yes.
Yes.
But that was just such a good description of spin.
And mine to say, it's kind of like actually spinning,
but not really is obviously terrible.
But you can think of it as like basically these little particles. You know, you can imagine it
as like they're maybe spinning one way or spinning the other way. And then based on how they're
spinning, they influence each other. And then in a material, like a molecular material, you imagine something
kind of like a jungle gym where there's connections, which are the bars between
particles, which are the particles. And so there's like a network of interactions
between the particles electromagnetically based on the spin. So it's almost like
the material becomes able to process information in some way or something
like that is that is that vaguely so so here's what happens in in practice for uh for spins
influencing uh chemical reactions and later on influencing macroscopic biological functioning
there's a class of chemical reactions that go like this.
It's happening, doing its stuff, maybe inside the test tube.
And at some point, the chemical reaction comes to a crossroads.
At that point, the chemical reaction is going to look for the spin state of a particular electron.
So in the same way that charge is usually called positive or negative,
spins are usually
depicted with arrows, spin up or spin down. So chemical reaction comes to a crossroads, it looks
effectively for the spin state of a particular electron. If the spin is up, the chemical reaction
continues through one branch. If the spin is down, the chemical reaction continues through a
completely different branch. Importantly, the macroscopic final products of those two branches are different, right?
So a tiny property influenced macroscopically the final product of a chemical reaction.
Now, magnetic fields can actually influence, talk to the spin
so that it might make one spin turn into the other, if you will,
so that the magnetic field itself via the spin
is also going to end up actually macroscopically altering
the final products of this chemical reaction.
final products of this chemical reaction. So this is how things happen in practice.
So this is how things happen in practice.
Wow, it just, it's so beautiful. I feel like this does need some like 3D animations done,
would be so beautiful to see. And, you know, I am Clarice in LA and hoping someday we can get you
out to our builders community on the west side because
we do have a bunch of Hollywood special effects people who could I think tell this story.
Wouldn't that be so fun? Awesome. Yes. Yes. Awesome.
But so this is another question and I'm sort of, it might sound a little weird. I hope I can put this into language the right way.
If this is possible, and I say that suspecting that it is possible.
I mean, we might suspect that biology has known this for a billion years, right?
Like if we start to look for the ways the system manifests, we might find.
We think, totally.
We think biology is the ultimate quantum engineer.
Yes, sorry to interrupt.
I just got excited.
Go for it.
No, be excited.
I'm excited.
Go play it ahead.
I can't wait to hear your vision.
But I would just say as an informatician,
the thing that I seem to have found with biology is
every rock you pick up, stuff scurries out.
Life finds a way to express information in in any
possible direction yeah and maybe let me tell you a little bit about and jeff maybe you should chime
in jeff and i were discussing if it would be more likely for quantum sensitivity to uh for quantum
ness inside biology to have developed later or from the start i think we both think that it's para a quantumness na biologia ter desenvolvido mais tarde ou do começo.
Eu acho que ambos pensamos que é muito mais
que a quantumness ter desenvolvido como uma alíquota do começo.
E também pensamos que, bem,
há evidência correlativa de que os seus sentidos são todos mediados,
ou, a maioria dos outros, mostly mediated by quantum stuff.
Jeff, tell us a little bit about the discussion that we were having.
Well, I mean, we were trying to think about implications for quantum biology. And I mean,
essentially, there's like Clarice said, circumstantial evidence that our senses are, I mean, you have
eyes are responsive to single photons. Photon absorption is itself a quantum process.
Smelling or olfaction is, there's evidence that it is a noise-assisted process. That's another
quantum phenomenon. And if the senses are quantum sensitive, if in other words,
what we're doing is a type of quantum sensing, then it's a fascinating fact
that that has been the output of the process of evolution. We know that
things that come in,
information that comes in from the senses,
can impact which actions we take.
So you see something and you go left rather than right.
So that's a, you know, if the seeing something has a quantum basis,
then you have a, you know, initially quantum phenomena
ultimately resulting in changes in action, which is macroscopic.
So there'll be a scale shifting effect there.
And then if the human body has, or the human organism has quantum sensing plus a scale shifting effect,
then you have to ask yourself, did that evolve late in the game? Or did that evolve early on and then get preserved over and through the process of evolution?
It was both Clarice and my intuition that it's much more likely that you would start off with a quantum sensitive process and then preserve that process carefully over
the course of evolution rather than starting with a classical system that
somehow managed to evolve both quantum sensitivity and whatever internal
mechanisms were needed for scale shifting effects.
But then as far as you know what does that end up meaning?
Well, we're still trying to sort through it, but part of the idea there is that, you know,
I mean, this is essentially, there's a chance that this applies a fairly strong constraint
to the path that evolution takes.
If when you're starting off with single-celled organisms
and they have a bunch of quantum sensitivities,
which makes sense because the things are very small
and evolution will take advantage of whatever it can,
then if you're starting off with these quantum sensitivities
and if the quantum sensitivities continue to be useful,
it's the whole thing seems very delicate and fragile,
which means, which would then end up applying,
like I said, a rather strong constraint
on the path of evolution.
And then we don't yet think we know what that means,
or maybe we're in the land of hypothesis and speculation
right now. But I personally expect that there are going to end up being sort of consequences for
this, including consequences for cognition. But we're working our way there.
Oh, man, it's just, it's quite, quite stunning. Hey, Aaron, I'm so curious, did you ever,
maybe like, I remember when I was a kid, we would go to the museum and they would show these videos
that like, we're imagining what the early life in the ocean, like how,
what that could have looked like down on the molecular level oh maybe she's uh too far from the mute button um but but yeah it's just
such an interesting thing because i i think there are actually some some interesting um philosophies
um i think there's one called biocosmism, and it kind of looks at the
idea that, you know, the sort of organization of information through matter could kind of
almost be a continuum between the base particles and, you know, biological structures. Because
like, I've always thought about that as kind of like what proteins really are, right? It's just a conveniently programmable matter, you know?
Yeah, and I think that there's a lot of evidence that, unsurprisingly,
that life on Earth evolved to function best under the environmental conditions of the Earth, right?
That's unsurprising.
But that leads to surprising
results. For example, the earth has an internal magnetic field that is orders of magnitude smaller
than the magnetic field produced by your cell phone. It's very, very, very tiny. And again, we have
And again, we have the fact that birds seem to be navigating north to south during migration using this tiny magnetic field of the Earth, at least as a partial cue.
When you remove the magnetic field of the Earth, weird things happen in biology, right?
So the effects of removing Earth's magnetic field have been reported for decades.
We just unveiled the most badass data that this is true.
So if you're curious, the address is bit.ly slash TEDPOL paper.
The idea is that we looked at more than 8,000 images of tadpoles having been raised in a
box that blocks the magnetic field of the earth.
And in fact, we found that tadpole embryogenesis is accelerated if you remove the magnetic
field, which means the profound implication of that is that for a tadpole egg, for a frog A implicação profunda disso é que, para um ovo de pedaço, para um ovo de pedaço,
sensando o campo magnético da Terra, ou sua presença, está sendo feita.
Não sabemos exatamente onde na célula, mas está lá.
A presença do campo magnético da Terra tem um efeito real, que é mesurável.
A coisa legal sobre este estudo é que, novamente, todos os dados são públicos,
todos os códigos que usamos para a análise são públicos, are public and this study puts firmly, should help firmly update the consensus that those effects
are both real and measurable and the most likely explanation for such an exquisite sensitivity of
magnetic fields is of course quantum. It's crazy because there are some websites, even from like the US Environment
Protection Agency, that tell us that no Earth's magnetic field does not affect human health.
Maybe people mean that it doesn't really affect negatively human health, but the fact that people
human health, but the fact that people think that such tiny magnetic fields are too tiny
to cause a biological triggering mechanism, that's a fallacy. That's wrong. And this is
sort of the belief that needs to be updated. Wow. I just have to say, in addition to just the particulars, the theory and the
presentation and the biology is just so fascinating. But there's, I think also to the research
methodology, you're talking about there feels like there's some real romantic curiosity involved right like there
there could be evidence of this throughout the you know totality of biology and it's kind of a matter
of finding the places where there's quantum interaction and then kind of doing doing the
detective work totally totally we expect those effects to be widespread and again uh for the
particular flavor of quantum biology that has to do with weak magnetic field effects in biology, these have been observed for decades and across the tree of life. that are using have hazardly found magnetic fields to do stuff for example there is novocure
that produces a headband that shrinks the size of a brain tumor of brain cancer tumor using weak
magnetic fields there is a company called regenesis bio that uses a weak magnetic field to reduce inflammation and pain from diabetes. There is a startup in
Singapore that uses weak magnetic fields to increase the proliferation rate of lab-grown
meat. So in particular, magnetic field effects are super widespread. We expect them to be at
use by biology, but even if they are not, we think that there's a lever there that can be put to use to do things.
Wow, I just love it. And I'm so happy, you know, just to plug it again for everyone.
Please go check out the Quantum BioDAO Twitter and you can find information to their uh current uh bio xyz
raise and i i think this is one of the this uh stories that's really going to be incredible to
follow and be a part of and um i i have to say like you're you're on our second show and i i hope we
can have you back as as we're growing the space and and production. And, you know, we'll be hearing some updates next time, I think.
And I did want to see if maybe there's any audience questions.
People wanted to say hi real quick.
Erin, I don't know if you're there or if you have any questions.
It seemed like maybe you had a...
Yeah, I got a rug on X for a minute but i think it would be a twitter x space without some rugging
you know of course of course uh i think i found the paper um or the bit.ly link that was just
referenced so i'm popping that down below if that's not the right link or paper
definitely would love to get that kind of added into the notes here for future listeners.
Was taking a quick read through this and what you were sharing as well there's so many incredible
like possibilities of where all of this work can go.
And it's so cool how you guys are leading the way and doing so in kind of a more modern futuristic approach by taking a D-SI stance to keep pushing all of this work forward. So I'm so excited to see just how this will continue to accelerate that field and also what other applications or discoveries might be possible from this.
any specific aspects of biology or maybe specific pathways or something that you're really excited
to dive into. Maybe that's near term or maybe it's kind of a longer term big picture vision
application. I would love to just hear from both of you what you're most geeked out, excited about.
Go Jeff. I mean, I guess I'm excited by a couple different things. I'll just say two of them.
I'm especially, on the quantum biology side, I'm especially interested to understand the theoretical implications.
I'm something of a theorist at least, and I really think that, I mean, it's like two parts of the scientific process.
There's the gathering of the data and the analysis of the data.
And I think there's been so much data gathered in so many different places
that better analysis can yield a lot of understanding,
at least of what really promising research paths there are.
So I'm just really excited to sort of draw out more of the implications of quantum biology and then see what's the fastest way we can get to confirmatory or disconfirmatory tests. I am really interested to learn about how it's, I think that there's this, there's a well-known
valley of death between basic science, which is often funded in a nonprofit way, and then the sort
of mature commercialization opportunities on the other side. And the DAOs are trying to occupy the middle, like right and solve
the problem directly. And I'm optimistic that there is a way to do it. And so that's, that's
something that I'm very interested in on the D-Sci side. Oh my gosh, that'd be so amazing if uh some of the the whole valley of death and all of those
projects that get stuck there uh might be able to have some more life to them that that could
have such profound effects on implications uh that's yeah well the the the doubt like the
it's funny because people you know sometimes say, you know, why do this on crypto? Why? And then, well, there are two answers. One is obviously, crypto, blockchain, Web3 technologies make it easier to do certain things makes it easier to coordinate in new ways.
certain things, makes it easier to coordinate in new ways. But in terms of the community,
the fact is that the people who are the most interested in embracing new innovations and
new technologies and trying to apply them frequently in radical new ways, like tons of those people have been attracted to crypto.
And so it's,
you're really dealing with the right community in decentralized
science and this is where you would expect there to be lots of,
lots of effort for innovation. Hey, you know, I got to say, oh, can you guys hear me or did I get rugged?
No, we hear you.
Oh, my goodness.
It's a it's a it's a Twitter miracle. Yeah, just wanted to say, as a big believer in DSi,
thank you guys so much for doing this in the DSi community
and letting us be some backup.
Because, I mean, what a beautiful story it'll be
when quantum biology becomes accepted
and it really did come from that middle space.
And yeah, I think that these projects that bridge really different areas and where you really even
need to build the right common consensus language are one of the places where DSI is going to have
the highest impact. So once again, please go check out the quantumbiodow Twitter
and support their BioXYZ cohort.
And then Erin, what do you think?
And also, if I may, we also have a Discord.
It's at quantumbiology.community.
That's a website that redirects our Discord.
We want to talk to people with very different
backgrounds if you are good with social media we have something for you if you're
good with chemistry we're good we have something for you and people with all
sorts of backgrounds from web 3 to social media to science talk to us we're
very interested in growing our quantum biology community.
And I will say I am in there and it is such a good community.
Some of the coolest papers being shared, some of the coolest discussion.
And yeah, I myself can't wait to kind of participate more.
And Aaron, I don't know if we can maybe get that added to the space.
And then, you know, while we're maybe doing some kind of wind up questions, we can keep
mentioning it, apply some peer pressure, get everybody in there.
And on that note, if anyone would like to raise their hand to come up and ask a question, please go right ahead.
One thing I wanted to share, and I'm a little sad because it looks like she left our guest from last week was here.
But Clarice, when we hang in person in L.A., we will have to introduce you because this person creates AI generated proteins that we can then
make in the wet lab. And we can do things like take base proteins with known properties and
optimize those properties. We can also tune the AI models to create proteins of a certain character.
So just as an example, I try to find proteins that work at
higher temperatures by studying. Unfortunately, we have a lot of data sets of temperatures rising
in the ocean. So, but yeah, I wonder too, if we could isolate some of these magnetosensitive
proteins and then try to generate some of our own as like a little side project. But anyway, that was just me filibustering.
And I see we have my dear bro and co-host of Spurter with Science.
Zach, do you have a question for QuantumBioDAO?
Yeah.
Oh, man, there's so many fun things in this space.
Really fascinated by what we might be discovering in brain science
and around all the protein interactions.
But another area of this that's just really tickling my brain that I'd love to hear what
anybody has insights on is around what we could be discovering in quantum biology in the field of
study around photosynthesis. Like somehow plants and plankton and algae
have been kicking our butts at using the sun.
Yes, yes.
And in fact, photosynthesis is more efficient
than any humankind developed solar cell.
It captures energy and transforms it into,
it captures light and transforms it into energy
in a super efficient way.
And the most up-to-date evidence is that it does so using a quantum process that is technically called quantum noise-assisted process.
phenomenon actually takes advantage of vibrations, of temperature, of things that usually would be
considered noise in order to transport this energy more efficiently. So yes, totally. Plants
in general and photosynthesis in particular, they're quantum, for sure.
photosynthesis in particular, they're quantum, for sure.
Wow.
Well, I have to say, Zach, such a good question,
because just imagine that there is maybe a whole information network
in the world's plants.
And I see Ed is actually in the audience,
and Ed is an absolute master of regenerative agriculture.
So I don't know if he'd be willing to jump up and join us as well, possibly.
But from Ed, I have learned that there is actually a rainforest of biodiversity in every
cup of healthy soil.
And so the idea that there could be like, you know, quantum information in our plants,
but then also, you know, this is that idea again, that life finds a way to interact and express itself, right? So maybe,
Ed, what do you think? Could there be a quantum sensing network in our soil microbiome?
Sorry, I tried to time it, but Twitter always gives you a little trouble with the
Sorry, I tried to time it, but Twitter always gives you a little trouble with the audio.
Yeah, I think that application also is super interesting.
I did some research on mycobacteria phage and just from kind of that whole ecosystem.
really interesting just seeing how that might affect different networks of viruses and
possibly different interactions with different bacteria and then consequently how that affects
other plant growth as well as animal interactions. And another thought that came to mind as you were
talking on the plant application down here in Mexico right now at Castalia,
Pamela from DSA, Mexico is leading out some efforts looking at plague spreading and growth across different species here,
especially invasive species or how insects might interact with them and mapping out all of that.
And it could be really interesting to see, OK, what if we added some of these other elements, maybe tying it into magnetism or if we were able to isolate different plants, maybe similar to how you've done that tadpole experiment, for example.
And seeing if maybe the spread would be more rapid or slower,
just maybe it would completely mutate it across the board. All of this is so cool and so many
amazing possibilities down the line. I feel like at least my brain is going all these different
directions and it's super exciting. Ed, I think you might be able to hear us now,
but Stanley was kind of teeing up different plant
or agriculture related tie-ins here.
And if you had any thoughts on that front.
Maybe he's, we'll see if he's able to chime in, but maybe there's a mic problem. But yeah, man, isn't there just a beautiful thing?
Like it's exploring a whole new layer of information and we might find kind of cool stuff happening.
Oh, are you there?
Oh, no, he went to a listener.
Okay.
We might find stuff just about anywhere we look. And I think we did have, is it Zufi, Chris, did you jump up? You wanted to ask a or maybe not or maybe we have ed or maybe twitter just uh playing playing whack-a-mole
with us today for speakers what do you think anybody there
we were just accidentally muted for a second but maybe maybe it's working now
oh yeah i was muted can you hear me now this is ed yes welcome oh great yeah i mean this is
really exciting stuff because just recently we've really understood how plants actually eat
and they're really into whole foods into bacteria and and how they take them up through their cell walls and
oxidize them and can actually program them somehow because they don't completely kill them
they'll take off the cell membrane and get nutrients out then they send it out somehow
can program it for the next nutrient that they want that bacteria to find to mine
send it out their root hair and um then seek it and there's some some communication that's
going out there that happens incredibly rapidly um and it signals the whole biome of that soil
around the root rhizosphere to um do the work and bring the nutrients back.
And of course, the fungal energy channels is something we've been baffled by for a long time,
how that works, how, you know, how nutrients are be able to go in both directions through the roots
and stuff through bacteria and everything. I mean, it's just,
and we're just starting to really be able to grasp a lot of that. And we're now on third generation metagenomics to be able to really understand our populations. And so it's really
revolutionizing the way we think of how plants live. And of course, we've known that plants and
trees can live out of rock so without really much
soil so how do they do that it's it's it's the microbiome that's that does it all and how does
it all signal you know and the brain we're now determining is the you know we have a physical
brain but plants through their root structure in the soil is their brain with all
the neurons connecting through that system and so they really do have a brain and they have memory
and and it's obviously all they don't have ears and noses and you know so it's obviously energy
that's uh doing all the work it's a different kind of intelligence. But again,
that's what's so beautiful is these different layers we're talking about, they can store
information and the intelligence is kind of in the information and Ed, thank you so much for
jumping up. And I have to share like I started learning about this metagenomic stuff in the human biology context. And then one of the
first other areas I got to learn about its application was from Ed in this absolutely
stupendously rich universe, like literally every cup of soil, if it's healthy soil, it has all
these different players that Ed's talking talking about interacting and uh ed i'm
so glad we're here right now man because i have to tell you i was just doing some interesting
um work related to the uh the walnut blight and this is i i you know used to be we had these
enormous groves of walnut trees in north america but then there was a blight and it seems to have come from
a fungi that's native to Southeast Asia. And then it's so funny because it's just a horrible
pathogenic illness, you know, a plague for the trees in North America, but it's just part of
this healthy microbiome of the soil in Southeast Asia.
And so it really just goes to the point of how much complexity there is right there in that interface.
And I think you're right, Ed. I think it really is like a whole brain down there in the soil.
We've actually found now there's one of our guys, John Kempf, who has an advancing eco-ag.
We now realize that there's not one pest or one pathogen that we can't solve with biome and
nutrition. All these plant diseases, crop diseases, and everything, everyone that we've
been put up against, as long as we, with the deeper
understandings we have, we now have a meter so we can measure the minerals in a plant, in the seed.
It's often a mineral loss that's a problem. It's in the nutrition, but that also connects with the
biome. So, and if we can do that with plant, we now have plants healthier than probably any plant
has ever been, ever, because of just understanding how to manage that nutrition and biome to a fine
degree. And if we can do that with plants, and now we're having our animals, our livestock,
eating those plants, all of a sudden they're becoming, and of course with metabolomics,
we can study that so we can grow plants sort of with a prescription for us, for our biome, for our nutrition.
There's no reason why we can't be incredibly healthy like we've never understood human health before.
man you know what uh ed i think uh we we got a one of our next guests here erin we'll have to
have ed on to do a a full regenerative agriculture um episode and um actually ed i don't know if
you've seen it but there's this documentary i caught recently called the biggest little farm
and it's it's kind of like a little showcase of ideas around regenerative agriculture um i don't
know if you've seen it but if you if you have or if you could see it,
I would love to get your take on how authentic it is for when you would do that episode.
Yeah, that's been out for a couple of years.
That's been out for a couple of years.
The best one now.
I think we're quantum on the...
No, no.
We just want to say bye because Jeff and I, we need to jump for another meeting.
No problem.
I was just about to wrap up anyway.
Forgive me.
We're just having a little bit of fun.
Thank you so much for having us.
We'll talk more at some other time.
Bye, people.
Looking forward to hearing more from you.
Sorry for that.
No, please forgive me.
I should have...
Peace so much.
We will have you guys back on and everybody go check out the quantum bio
discord.
I'm going to jump in there too.
Happy to chat with, with everybody.
And, and, and, like I said, we'll have you on for next time.
No, no, it's all good.
It's all good.
Like I said, Ed,
let's get your full review of biggestgest Little Farm on a future in the lab.
Although for you, it's going to be in the farm, I think, right?
Well, the field lab, same thing. We're just outside in the sun. That's all. You know, it's no different.
But the movie to look for that's going to be coming out on streaming services soon,
it's been in limited theaters. The one to really look for, and we're hoping it's, I don't know if
it's going to be out by Christmas, but really soon, is called Common Ground. It has a lot of
the researchers and the farmers of regenerative ag in it.'s a sequel to the movie kiss the ground that came out a few
years ago but that movie took quite a few years to make so by the time it got out our science had
advanced so much we needed they needed to do another one so it's been at selected theaters
for about a year um to try to bring back some money into the system from it. But it's going to be on streaming service.
I don't know which one, but really soon.
That's the one to look for.
Really, really cross-spectrum of what regenerative agriculture can offer the future.
I'm going to maybe watch that one,
and then we'll have some really good questions for you for a future episode of In the Lab.
And Erin, I hope you had a good time. Thank you so much for joining us. This was a blast.
Yes, I'm so excited for more of these episodes to come.
and the lab space of all these super cool projects
within the broader DSI
and kind of adjacently connected ecosystems,
AI, quantum, emerging tech broadly.
And I think what the world will look like,
especially from a scientific perspective
and not that far into the future
is going to be really, really amazing
and advanced from where we're at today.
Ed, looking forward to having you on in a future episode. And for everyone that's tuned in today,
thank you so much for joining. Definitely go follow the QuantumBio account. We have a
tweet pinned up above. Go follow the whole team there and check out their auction.
It's live for a couple more days.
So you were inspired today.
Now's a great time to get in kind of at the ground floor as they keep moving
forward.
So with that,
we'll see you back here for the next episode of in the lab.
And in the meantime we might have our regular kind of
scheduled uh event for d sign mike which is wednesdays at 5 5 p.m utc um if you are a really
cool scientist or researcher definitely reach out to myself or stanley the B-Sci Mike. We can have you on this series.
If you're in the broader D-Sci space or have other topics you would like to see discussed,
feel free to reach out to myself, D-Sci Mike, or regular Merrick down below as well.
And keep being awesome.
Keep pushing science forward.
And let's make it all happen.
Thanks so much, everyone.
