{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,20]],"date-time":"2026-03-20T18:20:40Z","timestamp":1774030840389,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":47,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,20]],"date-time":"2026-03-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1773964800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.plosone.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS One"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Time may be viewed as an emergent consequence of increasing information entropy. I explore a toy quantum\u2011information model in which DNA is treated as an open quantum system. In this framework, weak, time\u2011dependent perturbations (potentially arising from thermal fluctuations, ionic microfields, metabolic noise, or electromagnetic signals) bias the micro\u2011timing of events during replication and repair. These slight timing shifts can influence the fate of transient electronic and protonic configurations (including short\u2011lived tautomeric states driven by proton\u2011transfer tunnelling), subtly altering mutation probabilities. To test this idea, I map nucleotides in the Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome to constrained qubit states and quantify informational structure using Shannon and von Neumann entropies and coding to non\u2011coding correlation metrics. Simulations of Hamiltonian dynamics under physiologically plausible perturbations show that real genomic segments exhibit distinctive dynamical signatures compared with controls. I also examine a variant in which a weak, slowly varying external signal is introduced as a background \u201cbeat\u201d against which DNA dynamics can be compared. Because a Doppler shift in electromagnetic waves encodes the flow of time through the relative motion of source and observer, a cosmic microwave background (CMB) with a tiny frequency drift provides a conceptual clock and a source of informational entropy: it feeds a time\u2011correlated input into the DNA quantum system, allowing the molecule to sample cosmic time and translate it into a biological scale by modulating tunnelling probabilities and thus mutation patterns. This CMB\u2011inspired drive is simply a convenient illustration; the model does not rely on it, and other sources of weakly structured entropy could be tested. Across simulations, sequence\u2011dependent responses to both intrinsic and structured perturbations generate testable predictions: changing the structure or timing of these weak perturbations should produce reproducible shifts in mutation spectra. This framework connects cellular ageing and evolution to the flow of cosmic time and suggests experiments to probe DNA\u2019s sensitivity to time\u2011dependent perturbations.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0344520","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,20]],"date-time":"2026-03-20T17:30:04Z","timestamp":1774027804000},"page":"e0344520","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["DNA as a quantum system in evolution"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"21","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6903-9972","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Nahuel Aquiles","family":"Garcia","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,20]]},"reference":[{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0344520.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2702","DOI":"10.1038\/s41467-024-46950-0","article-title":"Real-time monitoring of replication errors\u2019 fate reveals the origin and dynamics of spontaneous mutations","volume":"15","author":"C Enrico Bena","year":"2024","journal-title":"Nat Commun"},{"key":"pone.0344520.ref002","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"101270","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jbc.2021.101270","article-title":"Temperature Effect on Polymerase Fidelity","volume":"297","author":"Y Xue","year":"2021","journal-title":"Journal of Biological Chemistry"},{"key":"pone.0344520.ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"8973","DOI":"10.3390\/ijms25168973","article-title":"Cellular and Molecular Effects of Magnetic Fields","volume":"25","author":"M Tota","year":"2024","journal-title":"IJMS"},{"key":"pone.0344520.ref004","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"109","DOI":"10.1038\/s42005-022-00881-8","article-title":"An Open Quantum Systems Approach to Proton Tunnelling in DNA","volume":"5","author":"L Slocombe","year":"2022","journal-title":"Commun Phys"},{"issue":"7","key":"pone.0344520.ref005","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"170497","DOI":"10.1098\/rsos.170497","article-title":"Evolution of organismal stoichiometry in a long-term experiment with Escherichia coli","volume":"4","author":"CB Turner","year":"2017","journal-title":"R Soc Open Sci"},{"issue":"8055","key":"pone.0344520.ref006","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"691","DOI":"10.1038\/s41586-025-08689-6","article-title":"Genome duplication in a long-term multicellularity evolution experiment","volume":"639","author":"K Tong","year":"2025","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"pone.0344520.ref007","unstructured":"Rieper E, Anders J, Vedral V. 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