Jack Tuszynski

"We now know that a living cell performs very complicated computations. In fact, every cell is more powerful than the most powerful computer today. What we as scientists want to find out is how cells are wired using their protein filament structures. If we succeed in this task we may be able to construct interfaces between living cells and man-made materials in order to create evolvable biologically-based hardware whose size would be smaller than the diameter of an individual hair."

1) I'm a physicist by training. Physicists are used to working at the extremes of sizes: from the smallest quark particles in the micro-world to the evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters in the outer expansesof the universe. Physics has given us the scientific method whose language is the language of mathematical equations. For a decade or so I have dedicated my time to the application of the physical methods to the unlocking of two of nature's greatest mysteries: what is life and what is consciousness. I want to push the boundaries of knowledge to the limit. The questions that obsess me are: (a) how life emerges out of inanimate matter? and , (b) how consciousness emerges out of "grey matter"?. Where are the boundaries between these structures?: living matter-non-living matter, conscious matter-unconscious matter. Is there anything more magnificent in the universe than the human brain? How can we understand its functioning?

2)The marriage between physics and biology is in the making whether we like it or not. Physics has been the "queen of the sciences" in the past three hundred years or so and especially in the past century it has led to the discovery of so many technological tools and devices that the life as we know it has become completely changed by these advances (radio, TV, lasers, engines, jet planes, telephones, microwaves, etc etc).

President Clinton said that twentieth century belonged to physics but the 21st will belong to biology. I tend to agree with this but with a proviso. Chemistry has undergone an evolution from alchemy to cookbooks to finally a branch of physics (quantum chemistry). Cell and molecular biology is well on the way to becoming branches of biophysics. What turned my attention towards biology and slightly away from physics is the purpose of life's work. I solved thousands of equations in my life. Will solving several hundred more make a difference? Probably not. If I use my physics training to bring biology closer to an exact science model, will it make a difference? The answer is emphatically yes. The main issue is not whether biology needs physics, it obviously does, the issue is whether physics is enough to explain life. I want to be there when this crucial issue is decisively attacked. Is life a new force which exists separately from the forces defined in physics: gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces? Is there a fifth force? A kind of elan vital to use the somewhat discredited language of Lamarck. Or conversely, is life just an emergent phenomenon which kind of happens when you assemble a complex enough and large enough cocktail of amino acids and nucleic acids and provide them with a wet and warm medium in which to swim and replicate?

One of the technical issues towards a solution of this dilemma is the generation of force and directionality of motion if so-called motor proteins. One of the key differences between living and non-living matter is that the former is capable of an autonomous (self-generated) directional motion. Motor proteins are the smallest components of living systems which have this capacity. Are they dead or alive? Do they switch between the two states, are they necessary pre-requisites for the existence of a living organism? I want to tackle this question head-on. Next month Starlab is co-organizing a conference in Canada dealing with these mysterious motor proteins which are at the core of what can only be described as the dance of life.

3) Consciousness is the other huge question which we have just started dealing with on a scientific level. How does a piece of living matter acquire the property of self-awareness? is it a sudden or a gradual process of building an ever increased complexity? Surely, being alive is necessary to be conscious but equally certainly it is not enough. Anesthesia is a case in point. In the study of both what life is and what mind is, one encounters strange molecular protein filaments called microtubules. They are key in cell division and also in nerve functioning. I spent almost a decade studying them from the physics perspective. I strongly believe answers are close at hand. Once we find them, we can address such issues as: can we artifically create living systems, can we restore life, can we induce awareness, can we suspend life and/or consciousness. This is clearly, until now the stuff of science fiction. I stronly believe that in this new millenium, these questions will be not only studied but answered by scientists. I want to be one of the people participating in this quest.

4) The range of possible applications is simply mind boggling. On the positive side, we will be able to cure all types of diseases from Alzheimer's to cancer with molecular manipulation techniques using both physics and biology. In decades to come, we will be designing and building molecular nanofactories in which motor proteins do the work of assembling the molecules of a drug or a medication specifically engineered for an individual patient. We can achieve the growth of tissue, bone, nerves etc from the ground level up - ie from a molecular template provided by the DNA. These materials will then be used in transplants that are guaranteed not to be rejected. I'm just giving you a few examples of the brave new world of the bio-medical science of the future.

5) Why is the knowledge of the past important? When I was 12 I fell in love with the cultural achievements of ancient Greece, from their myths to their monuments. Someone told me recently that in architecture after the Greeks, nothing of great importance was discovered until the age of the American sky-scrapers. In physics, the key concepts such as atomicism, causality were known to the Greeks. The Romans gave us technology which was built on the basis of Greek ideas and concepts.To give you another example, in the last 25 years of the twentieth century physics was strongly influenced by the idea of nonlinearity. It turns out that many of the nonlinear equtions had been solved by the French mathematicians Gambier, Painleve and Poincare already at the end of nineteenth century, including the revolutionary concept of chaos first discovered by Poincare. These achievements were subsequently forgotten by generations of mathematicians and physicists. In a nutshell, "you learn from the past" and "those (nations) who do not know their history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past"