Fig. 1

A Schematic visualization DNA as harmonic oscillator in a cell. Far from being a rigid, isolated stairwise structure of subsequent nucleobases, DNA is considered as an elastic complex, in constant interaction with surrounding molecules (indicated by water molecules in the example) and the thermal excitations (indicated by grey temperature gradient) coming from its background. B DNA with stacking pi-orbitals allowing electron tunneling. Schematic representation of DNA double strand. Each sphere represents a nucleotide along the strands, surrounded by its Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital (LUMO) populated by an excited electron. The overlap of close by orbitals (blue arrows) allows the electron to move from a base to the other through quantum tunneling phenomena. Eventual lack of orbital overlap (domain walls) prevents this phenomenon to happen, resulting in the electron only managing to populate the neighboring base through classical hopping processes, thermally enhanced. In this representation, we use pi-orbitals as example of LUMO as in the literature there are many references to these orbitals as being the most suitable for our modeling. C Chirality-induced spin selectivity by DNA. The chiral structure of the DNA helix is such that electrons with opposite spin are pushed in different directions along the chain, resulting in an effective quantum spin selectivity phenomenon within the DNA structure. D Guanine as charge trap in DNA. The dynamics of an excited electron along the chain (decided by the energy landscape characterizing the strand) is usually dragged toward sites containing guanine bases. The cytosine on the opposite strand of the guanine is prone to epigenetic modification (e.g., methylation) in a CpG context. Whereas cytosine methylation itself does not discontinue charge transfer (but might change its dynamics), flipping out the base for modification in the enzymatic process can perturb charge transfer