A proposal for the quantum mechanical study of genomic mutations driven by environmental stressors

Abstract

We propose a novel quantum statistical method to characterize DNA point mutations under the influence of UVC radiation, salinity, and temperature. We consider an open quantum system composed of an external environment -- high-energy photons -- coupled to the DNA molecule, and using energy considerations we estimate free parameters in a many-body Hamiltonian, to characterize critical behaviour in the system. The model presented here offers the advantage that one does not explicitly need to know each detail of the interaction between the base-pairs and the environment, by knowing whether the effect is to associate or dissociate the DNA molecule, one can incorporate it into the model. We show that by fine-tuning the free parameters, the model gives results that are within a biologically realistic range in the energetic scale. Importantly, specific heat values show that by coupling DNA to an external bath, the system dynamics leads to larger fluctuations at slightly lower temperatures. Following this research strategy, one could use experimental data to extract a correlation between specific heat and DNA changes, which would provide insight to predicting evolutionary changes.