The Biophoton Revolution

BEYOND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY The Biophoton Revolution by Jonathan Te nnenbaum ver the last 20 years, blacked-out from the pages of the other was optically shielded as a control. Subsequently, standard textbooks, and only seldom represented in both cultures were incubated for a certain time; then the cells Othe leading professional journals, a new, revolution were fixed and the number of mitoses (seen as "buds" on the ary field of biological research has emerged: the investigation yeast cells) were counted under a microscope for the exposed of the spontaneous photon radiation emitted from living cells, culture and fo r the control. as a "window" onto the most fundamental life processes. At The presence (and to a lesser extent, the strength) of the mito present, experimental investigations related to this "biopho genetic radiation revealed itself in a significantly positive differ ton" emission are being carried out in about a dozen laborato ence in the exposed cells relative to the controls. Gurwitsch and ries and institutes, including in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, his co-workers developed this technique to the point, that they the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, China, India, and Japan. could even obtain spectra of the mitogenetic radiation, by inter A number of these research groups have joined forces to polating a diffraction apparatus between the source and detector. create an International Institute of Biophysics (liB), which is now coordinating much of the research in this area. Over the A Science of Theoretical Biology last several years, this author has had the privilege of partici Fortunately, Gurwitsch was no mere experimenter, but one pating in several of the yearly symposia of the liB, held in of the greatest theoreticians of biology in this century. In fact, it Hombroich, Germany. was his conception of the biological field, developed in con The fact, that practically all living processes are light emit nection with countless experimental studies of embryology, ters-albeit usually at an extremely low level-was fi rst dis morphogenesis, and histology, which originally led him to hy covered by. the great Russian biologist Alexander Gurwitsch in pothesize the existence of some sort of distant, radiative inter the 1920s. Gurwitsch demonstrated in 1923, that when two action between cells. The experimental demonstration of the onion roots are situated in a common plane, in such a way that mitogenetic effect by the famous "onion root" experiment the growing tip (meristem) of the fi rst root points toward a hailed at the time as one of the most important experimental point X along the axis of the second root, at a distance of sev discoveries of the century-by no means distracted Gurwitsch eral millimeters, then the frequency of cell division (mitosis) from his main goal, namely the creation of a comprehensive was increased in the region of X, compared to the opposite Science of Theoretical Biology. side of the second root. In the subsequent period, Gurwitsch and his growing school This "mitogenetic effect" (as Gurwitsch called it) was not af of students and collaborators, transformed mitogenetic radia fected when a transparent quartz window was placed between tion into a powerfu l experimental technique for fundamental the two roots, but it disappeared when he replaced the quartz biological research. Mitogenetic radiation attracted worldwide window by ordinary glass or opaque materials. By a variety of scientific interest and became, in the course of the 1930s, one further experiments, Gurwitsch was able to establish that the of the main areas of biological research in the Soviet Union. physical agent of this stimulation of the rate of mitosis in the An enormous number of interesting and important results were second root (the mitogenetic effect), was a very weak, ultravio published in nearly every major domain of biology, including let light radiation emitted from the meristem of the fi rst root. also neurophysiology and cancer research. He called this "mitogenetic radiation." Unfortunately, for reasons I indicate elsewhere (see box, p. Soon, Gurwitsch and his co-workers were able to demon 30), Gurwitsch's work on mitogenetic rad iation came under strate that countless other biological objects, including animal heavy attack in the 1930s-not accidentally at the same time as tissue, cultures of microorganisms, and even some biological funds began to be poured into molecular genetics and molecu materials such as blood, emit mitogenetic radiation. Gurwitsch lar biology, which were built up to take the dominant position in found that specially prepared cultures of yeast cells, grown on biological research in the postwar period. After World War II, agar blocks, made the most convenient and reliable detectors the whole subject of mitogenetic radiation nearly disappeared for the study of mitogenetic emission. Typically, the yeast cul from view, at least in the West; while in the Soviet Union, a few ture blocks were divided into adjacent pairs; one side was groups--centered on students of Gurwitsch--continued active briefly exposed to an experimental object as "source," while experimental work in the directions he had initiated. 38 Winter 1998-1 999 21 st CENTURY The main attack on Gurwitsch consisted in the claim, that all HZR GK274 the thousands of experiments by Gurwitsch's and other groups 180 (including in France and Germany), demonstrating the mitoge netic effect, were "wrong," and that Gurwitsch's mitogenetic radiation simply "does not exist." To bolster this assertion 155 hardly credible to anyone familiar with the quality of the scien tists involved, and their painstaking methods of work-it was � pointed out, that Gurwitsch's experiments were exclusively c: � 130 based on the use of biological objects as detectors; whereas at .<: c.. tempts to detect the radiation by technical means (photodetec tors) had failed or yielded·ambiguous results. The argument 105 was also raised, that a light radiation, so weak that it could not be detected by technical devices-notto speak of by the hu man eye itself-could hardly be expected to have any notice 80 +-------�------��------�-------r able effect on biological objects. 250 313 375 437 500 In fact, as we know today, the spontaneous photon radiation Seconds of living organisms is indeed too weak-given the problems of LOW LEVEL LUMINESCENCE OF sensitivity and background noise-to have been re liably mea CUCUMBER SEEDLINGS sured by the kinds of photodetector apparatus that were avail Photons per second observed between 250 and 500 able in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1954, however, a group of Ital seconds in the course of time. The dark-count rate is of ian astronomers who had been working on the development of the order of 70 photons. The figure is from Fritz Popp 's supersensitive light detectors, discovered that sprouts of wheat, experimentation, as he reported in "Principles of Quan corn, beans, and other plants constantly radiate light at an in tum Biology As Demonstrated by Ultra weak Photon tensity of the order of 1 0 to 100 photons per second per square Emission from Living Cells, II International Journal of Fu centimeter of living tissue. These results were fi rst looked on as sion Energy, Vo l. 3, No. 4, Oct. 1985. a curiosity in the West, but they gave a considerable boost to the work of Gurwitsch's fo llowers in the Soviet Union. demonstrate the existence of principles of organization of liv Fritz Popp's Experiments ing processes, which are entirely incompatible with the basic In 1973, some of the newer Soviet results caught the atten assumptions of molecular biology. tion of the German biophysicist Fritz Popp and his collabora tors. At that time, Popp was working in cancer research; he Biophoton Radiation in Brief and a group of graduate students were trying to fi nd an expla We cannot go into the matter in depth here, but the fo llow nation for the extremely powerfu l carcinogenic action of the ing brief summary should give the thoughtfu l reader a sense of substance 3,4-benzpyrine, compared to the very similar, but the fundamental importance and anomalous character of bio essentially harmless l,2-benzpyrine. Popp's hypothesis was, photon radiation. This should wet the reader's appetite for that the anomalously strong carcinogenic action of the former more in-depth discussions of these matters in coming issues of molecule was somehow related to a known, peculiar feature of 21st Century. its absorption and emission spectra in the ultraviolet range. (1) It is well established that spontaneous, ultraweak photon The idea, that the carcinogenic action of 3,4-benzpyrine might emission is a ubiquitous phenomenon throughout nature. This be caused directly by its optical characteristics-and not nec ultraweak emission is completely different in nature from the essarily mediated through its chemical reactivities-went di familiar, much more specialized phenomenon of "biolumi rectly against the prevailing, molecular-biological mindset of nescence," typified by firefl ies for example, and whose inten most cancer researchers. sity is many orders of magnitude larger. The intensity of ultra But to put the matter rather simplistically: How could the weak emission diffe rs very greatly between cell posited optical action be accounted for, unless there were a types-undisturbed animal cells having generally the lowest source of light in the cell? And unless very small photon "sig rate of emission-but also varies greatly from moment to mo nals" could trigger gross changes in the behavior of cells? The ment for any given culture or organism studied. The emission Soviet work on "ultraweak" photon radiation of cells seemed often contains "trains" of very short (sub-millisecond) "photon to provide the missing link. bursts" with a tendency toward recurrence, but with con In order to learn more about this photon radiation, Popp and stantly shifting periodicities.

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