  Quantum biology is an emerging field of research that concerns itself with
the experimental and theoretical exploration of non-trivial quantum phenomena
in biological systems. In this tutorial overview we aim to bring out
fundamental assumptions and questions in the field, identify basic design
principles and develop a key underlying theme -- the dynamics of quantum
dynamical networks in the presence of an environment and the fruitful interplay
that the two may enter. At the hand of three biological phenomena whose
understanding is held to require quantum mechanical processes, namely
excitation and charge transfer in photosynthetic complexes, magneto-reception
in birds and the olfactory sense, we demonstrate that this underlying theme
encompasses them all, thus suggesting its wider relevance as an archetypical
framework for quantum biology.
