Quantum theory lets many entities unite into one entity that exists in all its possible physical states at once, as molecule superpositions do (3.8.1), so each time-cycle can explore all possible states simultaneously until a physical event stops the entanglement. This collapse should happen every quantum cycle for matter but if chromophore molecules re-entangled, a photon excitation could explore all possible paths to a reaction center concurrently, to quickly find the fastest path and allow the otherwise impossible efficiency of photosynthesis.
The quantum biology theory of photosynthesis is that molecules vibrating in synchrony maintain a coherence that the molecular bustle of a normal cell usually destroys. This seems unlikely, but entities created at the same time and place entangle (3.8.5), so their synchrony could make molecules entangle. The premise that adjacent molecules vibrating in near perfect synchrony can entangle lets coherence play a role not only in enzyme activity (Frohlich, 1970) but also in biological puzzles like smell, protein folding, ion channels, and bird navigation (Gauger, 2011).
The foundation of quantum biology may then lie the existence of life on earth. The earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and its crust and oceans settled about 4.1 billion years ago, yet evidence of the first life appears 300 million years later. This seems a long time, but that molecules a primeval swamp randomly produced life in this timeframe is beyond improbable, as the number of candidates for a successful self-replicating RNA molecule is over 10100. A lottery of six random numbers takes about three million tickets to win, but a lottery of over 100 numbers needs more tries than there have been molecular events in our universe, so life is implausible even on a cosmic scale.
The quantum cradle hypothesis is that the first life molecule was discovered not by a random search but by the ultra-fast quantum exploration of entangled molecules, as nanopore flaws in metallic crystals provided niches that sustained molecular coherence to some degree. Our earth didn’t just run the lottery of life; it supercharged it by allowing quantum search techniques. Life on earth then isn’t an impossible fluke that leaves us alone in the universe, but the inevitable result of evolution using quantum effects, so it will be in many places, even if only bacterial.
Quantum beats are presumed to only reflect molecular coherence but synchronous vibrations could both trigger entanglement and maintain it. How early mineral crystals oscillated is unknown, but there is evidence that microtubules in cell structures produce synchronous vibrations that allow Frohlich coherence at room temperatures (Samsonovich et al., 1992). The cell wall could then constantly orchestrate the coherence of its molecules as well as shield them from external noise (Penrose & Hameroff, 2017), as its vibrations will transfer to the molecules within it. Physics lets atoms entangle in a molecule, so that molecules entangled within a vibrating cell allow the effects that quantum biology proposes is not unreasonable.
Microtubules offer a mechanism for molecule coherence within a cell niche, but unifying a cell is a far cry from unifying a brain. Orchestrated objective reduction theory argues that our unity arises when microtubules make the brain a quantum computer, so quantum processing enables consciousness (Penrose & Hameroff, 2017). However the microtubule coherence at cell timescales of 10-13 to 10-6 seconds is too brief (Tegmark, 2000), as the time scale of human consciousness is orders of magnitude greater (Jedlicka, 2017). Microtubules also can’t explain why some brain events are conscious and others aren’t (Baars & Edelmann, 2012), as unconscious regions of the brain contain just as many microtubules.
In summary, if evolution in general first entangled light into matter (4.3.1), then entangled matter into higher atoms (4.6.1), that then entangled into increasingly complex molecules, that molecules entangled into a living cell is no surprise, but forming a brain required a special type of cell: the neuron.