Thor wrote:

Energy bands occur in crystals due to the atoms being closer together
nulling
the potential energy between them and turning the discrete level of
each atom
orbital into energy bands with discrete energy to obey Pauli exclusion
principle.

Now I'd like to ask if there is anything in living tissues which has
this energy
band property of crystals. I'm evaluating the works of Hameroff,
Penrose, Frohlich,
etc. who state that the crystalline properties of the body such as
microtubules and
even connective tissues act like crystals and even semiconductors as
far as
energy banding is concerned. True?

I'm not familiar with the works you mention, but structural elements of
the mammalian cell (microtubules, actin fibers, intermediate filaments)
while at one level have an extremely regular construction, the 'atoms'
that are used to construct these large structures are themselves very
massive proteins. Therfore, the relevant energy scale needs to be
adjusted accordingly- rather than look for eV-scale electronic energy
bands, I suspect any energy banding effect would occur at very low
frequencies (micro-eV or lower) and would probably be washed out by
thermal excitations. Carbon nanotubes are significantly smaller than
microtubules, and already semiconductor-like properties barely occur, AFAIK.

Moving out to larger tissue superstructures (bones, muscles, etc), one
cannot help but notice the crystalline-like regularity, but continuing
to use the analogy with atomic crystals would be marginally useful at best.

That said, bones and teeth are piezoelectric, just like some crystals.

--
Andrew Resnick, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics
Case Western Reserve University