Biological charge transfer within a magnetic field: can it become chaotic?

Charge transfer (the movement of charge density locations within/between molecules) is ubiquitous in biological reactions, and there is good evidence of charge-transfer in DNA in solution. What happens to this charge movement in the presence of a magnetic field and gradient, e.g. generated by nearby processes or externally? The charge movement would tend to a curved path due to the magnetic field (just basic physics here), but such a curved path would have a magnetic moment, which would experience a force from a magnetic field gradient (Force = Magnetic moment * Gradient) would then twist the charge-transfer into a new path, which would then interact with the field differently. And so on. It's possible that there are chaotic regimes, and this might have significant implications for biological reactions. -Chris

I'm interested - Kathryn

sounds good. i would vote to either focus on a toy model and try to understand the behavior in more detail, or pick a molecule where there is some intuition that strange electron dynamics may play an important role in molecular function. - john

also, it would be a good idea to get an idea as to in what regimes this classical analysis will hold. -j

i too am interested, i think definitely a toy model for beginning and maybe some analytic investigation as to determine whether chaos is possible for model at hand. complexity/realism can be added if time permits. can someone propose a time for when we can get together and round table this? dan

How about we schedule a kick-off meeting at 4:30 pm on 12 Jun 07 (Tuesday), right after Mark Newman's lecture on Networks? Joshua has the Hubler lab, but I think everyone else is free. -Chris