existence of room temperature superconductivity in organic materials, including long-chain polymers
(51, 52), and sandwiches consisting of conducting films and an insulating layer (53, 54). In the early
1970's experimental evidence for superconductivity in organic solids was reported. Halpern and Wolf
found that two of the cholates, a family of bile salts, exhibited superconductive behavior in
microdomains inside the salts (whose macroscopic properties were those of ordinary insulators) (55).
The observed transition temperatures were 30-60° K, but, in subsequent studies of cholates, transition
temperatures as high as 277°K (sodium cholanate) were found (56, 57). Ahmed et al. reported
superconduction in a 0.1% lysozyme solution at 303°K (58).
The temperature dependence of the single-electron tunneling current between adjacent
superconductive microdomains in a material can be shown to be:
where a is a constant, T is absolute temperature, k is Boltzmann's constant, Eo is one-half the binding
energy of a Cooper pair at 0° K, and Tc is the temperature below which the material is a
superconductor. If one assumes that a biological process is rate-limited by single-electron
superconductive tunneling, then i can be identified with the rate of the process, and E with its activation
energy. Under this assumption, E-determined from the Arrhenius plot of the data-should satisfy
equation (2). Cope found six sets of biological data that showed the behavior expected for rate
limitation by single-electron superconductive tunneling (59) (see table 4.1).
Table 4.I. SUPERCONDUCTION PARAMETERS FOR BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES
Thus, his analysis suggests both the existence of superconductive microdomains in biological
tissue, and a physiological role for superconductivity. Cope has obtained further evidence that
superconductivity occurs in biological tissue from an analysis of the magnetization characteristics of
RNA, melanin, and lysozyme (60).
ELECTROMAGNETISM & LIFE - 62