Could 'Schrödinger's bacterium' be placed in a quantum superposition?

A proposal for putting a living bacterium into a superposition of quantum states has been unveiled by physicists in the US and China. If successful, the experiment would be the first realization – albeit microscopic – of Schrödinger's famous thought experiment involving a cat in a box that is simultaneously alive and dead until an observer makes a measurement by peering into the box. As well as improving our understanding of the foundations of quantum mechanics, the researchers say that their proposed experiment could also yield a new technique for monitoring defects in biological molecules.