AMPLIFICATION OF SUPERPOSITIONAL EFFECTS THROUGH ELECTRONIC CONFORMATIONAL INTERACTIONS

Electronic-conformational interactions allow for a speedup of biomolecular structure formation that derives from the quantum mechanical superposition principle. Changing phase relationships among electronic states of different energy lead to perturbative interactions between non Born-Oppenheimer electrons and atomic nuclei that can have a self-amplifying (positive feedback) character. Conformations that satisfy the conditions for such an interaction are inherently unstable. The term ''conformational soliton'' refers to nuclear configurational changes that ripple through macromolecular lattices in a manner that preserves informational integrity. The model suggests that such states of ordered conformational motions are generic to polymacromolecular organizations of the type that occur in biological cells.