Lea Gassab

Living systems constantly interact with light, not only through vision, but also through the optical properties of molecules, proteins, and cellular structures. They may also use light-sensitive processes to organize, transfer, or respond to energy at very small scales. Quantum biophotonics provides a way to study these light–matter interactions in biological systems. Microtubules are tiny protein filaments found inside cells. They help maintain cell shape, organize the cell interior, and act as tracks for transporting molecular cargo. In neurons, they are especially important because they support long cellular extensions and help maintain the architecture needed for communication and function. Beyond these well-known roles, microtubules have a highly ordered molecular structure. They are built from tubulin proteins that contain aromatic amino acids, especially tryptophan, which can absorb light and participate in energy-transfer processes. Our work combines theoretical, computational, and experimental approaches to examine how excitations may move through tryptophan networks in tubulin, how microtubule structure and environment shape optical responses, and how oxidative stress or other chemical changes may alter these properties. Together, these efforts aim to build a testable framework for understanding microtubules not only as structural elements, but also as organized molecular systems with light-sensitive and energy-dynamic properties. This perspective may be relevant to neurodegeneration, where microtubule disruption, oxidative damage, and altered cellular organization are common features. More broadly, it may offer a careful physical route toward larger questions in neuroscience, including how molecular processes inside neurons contribute to brain function and, ultimately, to the study of consciousness.

Lea Gassab, Ph.D. is a physicist in the Quantum Neurobiology Lab at the University of Waterloo. She was awarded the Provost’s Program for Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Scholars to support her interdisciplinary work at Waterloo, bridging quantum physics, biology, and computational modeling. Her research focuses on quantum and light-sensitive processes in microtubules, with relevance to brain function, protein damage, and neurodegenerative disease. She earned her Ph.D. in Physics from Koç University and completed her M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Physics at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France. She regularly shares her work through conference presentations, research seminars, and interdisciplinary scientific meetings, including QuEBS, the Quantum Biology Forum, and SPIE.