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Biotech Science

Cells May Communicate Through Light 52

SilverLobe writes "The hypothesis that living cells may use photons for communications has been on the fringes of cell biology for a while. No proof positive exists, but there is some strong circumstantial evidence. Byte Size Biology reports on a simple experiment that shows how the unicellular protozoan Paramecium may use so called 'biophotons' to signal for growth and feeding. The original academic paper in PLoS ONE concludes: '... not all cellular processes are necessarily based on a molecule-receptor recognition. The non-molecular signals are most probably photons. If so, cells use more than one frequency for information transfer and mutual influence.'"
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Cells May Communicate Through Light

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  • No proof... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    To be fair, there is never any _proof_ in biology. Only observations of occurances and patterns. You can only disprove things in biology. Mathematics reserves the right for universal truths.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by SUB7IME ( 604466 )

      "Mathematics reserves the right for universal truths."

      ^

      Godel might have something to say about that.

      • Prove it. (Score:5, Funny)

        by jeffb (2.718) ( 1189693 ) on Sunday May 24, 2009 @11:35AM (#28075485)

        "Mathematics reserves the right for universal truths."

        ^

        Godel might have something to say about that.

        In the most universal sense.

      • by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Sunday May 24, 2009 @11:55AM (#28075631) Homepage

        Godel might have something to say about that.

        No, he really wouldn't. Godel's primary results are that a) we can't be sure that certain systems are self-consistent and b) there are some statements that we can't prove. That in no way alters the level of access mathematics has to universal truth. When a statement is proven from a set of axioms it does follow from those axioms and anything which satisfies those axioms will satisfy the statement. Godel's theorems have nothing to say about that. There are good arguments against the notion that mathematicians have access to universal truth. For example, we all make arithmetic mistakes comes to mind. Also, there are published papers that have incorrect results that need to be retracted. Arguments can be made in this regard, but Godel has little to do with this matter.

        • Thank you!

          Too frequently on Slashdot people trot out Godel's results to dispute just about anything. Godel's theorems are surely very deep and fundamental, but that doesn't mean they can be used to call into question everything. They make very specific statements about completeness and consistency. (I see a similar pattern with people trotting out the Halting Problem [wikipedia.org] in discussions of computation, when, again, it doesn't always apply.)

          The irony, of course, is that if it were true that Godel's theorem calls

        • by SUB7IME ( 604466 )

          Excuse me. I should have said "Godel might have something to say about mathematics reserving the right for *all* universal truths."

          But then again, your response would have been much less funny. Also, I know you.

          • Well, if you had said that, I wouldn't have commented since I would then have been in complete agreement. Incidentally, how do I know you?
            • by SUB7IME ( 604466 )

              Undergrad. To be more accurate, I know people who know you. I'm not sure that we've ever met in person.

  • by SUB7IME ( 604466 ) on Sunday May 24, 2009 @11:17AM (#28075347)

    FTFA: "Depending on the cuvette material and the number of cells involved, these effects were positive or negative."

    Occam's razor: These are stochastic effects.

    Seriously, he replicated these studies 4 times TOTAL. "Depending on the cuvette material and the number of cells involved, these effects were positive or negative" basically fits the definition of a null hypothesis, which I certainly won't reject on the basis of 4 trials. Call me when an outside lab replicates this in a large number of trials.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Eukariote ( 881204 )

      Seriously, he replicated these studies 4 times TOTAL.

      You have misread the abstract and have not read the experimental-setup section of the paper, which read:

      Each experimental block consisted finally of 10 units: 2 types of material (glass or quartz) ×5 combinations of Paramecium (an inner cuvette containing 5 Paramecium within a cuvette containing 100 Paramecium, an inner cuvette with 5 Paramecium within a cuvette containing medium only or demineralised water, and an inner cuvette containing medium o

      • by SUB7IME ( 604466 )

        You're discussing experiment 1. I was discussing experiment 2. Sorry for not making that clear.

    • Can some one please confirm for me the geometrically impossible conditions described in the methods section. the section on Cuvette's begins:

      Populations of Paramecia were separated from each other with cuvettes with a wall thickness of 1.5 mm. Two sizes of cuvettes were used: 2.3 mm x 2.3 mm x 40 mm, and 1.5 mm x 1.5 mm x
      45 mm.

      these are I beleive the inner and outer cuvettes. He does not state if those numbers given are the outer widths of the inner width of the cuvettes. But under either assumption the

      • responding to myself.

        I notice another troubling inconsistency. the experimental set up says that 1ml of medium was added to a given number of paramecium. (e.g. 100 or 25 or 5 or 0 paramecium).

        in the study organism section it says the stock culture was kept at 100 paramecium/ml

        The problem here is that a paramecium has a size of about 200 to 300 microns. which I take to translate to a volume of .3 * 0.3 *0.3 = 0.027 ml/paramecium.

        100 paramecium thus occupy 2.7 ml of solution.

        thus you can't have a stock solu

        • Without negating my original post questioning the cuvette geometry, I note that my statement about the volume of liquid and the numbers of individuals is highly mistaken. I mistook cubic mm of millileters which is wrong by 1000 fold. However I still think there is a svere issue with the cuvette dimensions that I'd like explained.

  • ...they were just listening to techno music during the experiments?
  • by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Sunday May 24, 2009 @11:48AM (#28075571) Homepage

    This can't be emphasized enough. Life finds incredibly clever ways of doing things. And we are only just really beginning to understand just how amazingly sophisticated life is.

    That said, this really shouldn't be that surprising. We know that many larger life forms use light to communicate. It is quick and efficient. It doesn't take time to disperse like chemical signals. And many life forms have the ability to sense light anyways so it shouldn't be that hard to evolve the use of light as a signaling mechanism.

    • by SUB7IME ( 604466 )

      "It is quick and efficient. It doesn't take time to disperse like chemical signals."

      Sure, propagation is quick. On the other hand, generating the light does take time and energy because it's liberated via a chemical process.

      In the end, you're simply establishing a tradeoff. With chemical signals, you have a substance that is slow to transmit, but stays around for an extended period (unless you want it to go away, then you just digest it). Light as a signal transmits rapidly, but must be regenerated constant

    • This can't be emphasized enough. Evolution isn't smart. Clever solutions are the result of time and probability: millions of permutations of similar creatures until one with a slightly better permutation survives long enough to have slightly more offspring than its peers.

      If you're going to anthropomorphize evolution, call it brute-force. It's the biological equivalent of "hacking" a password by trying every permutation of letters and numbers.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 )
        Yes, anthropomorphizing it isn't a great idea. It would be more accurate to say that "many things evolve which humans would likely never have thought up on their own in any reasonable length of time." However, comparing evolution to a brute force search is extremely inaccurate. Indeed, genetic algorithms are frequently much more efficient than brute force searches. The solution space in biology isn't like a single password. A better analogy would be if there were many valid passwords each which gave slightl
        • by iroll ( 717924 )

          Ah yes, the evolution of the modern analogy. What wonders will its daughters have in store for us? =)

        • hmmm you've invalidated your own response with the qualifier 'search'. The parent simply said 'brute-force'. I'll restate it in my own words, possibly distorting his meaning, as "trial and error" which for most purposes is equivalent to brute-force and is likely the first example of this methodology.

          Your comment on genetic algorithms is completely off BTW as it refers to the output of evolution rather than the process. Actually the whole entirety of your argument is talking about biological processes rather

      • by ukyoCE ( 106879 )

        This is a bit of a nitpick, but evolution is much better guided than you give it credit for.

        I didn't realize this until I started reading about artificial life, but "random mutation" has approximately nothing to do with evolution. It's all about sexual reproduction mixing genes around.

        It IS still random, but a far stretch from the terribad "tornado through a junkyard" analogy that creationists like to cite.

        • by iroll ( 717924 )

          Yeah, I definitely wouldn't go with the tornado-through-the-junkyard analogy, but sexual reproduction is an acquired and beneficial trait, not a requirement for evolution. Gene-swapping speeds the process and increases the chance for viable improvements; however, simple asexual reproduction over millions of generations can accomplish a huge amount of change *if* there are selective pressures on the population.

          In fact, you could say the same thing about starting with a monoculture (all members of the popula

  • Slashdot is bringing it to the people. The unfortunate part of Slasdot's "nerd" image is that it's just preaching to the choir! "Pure" science is altruistic. The value of science is not found in how correct it is but to what effect it has on society. The value of truth has no meaning to the universe. If our lies match observations does that make them truth? Yes. PS. This particular study may be flawed but the study of light and biological communication is a fascinating story. One of many interesting examp
  • by foobsr ( 693224 ) on Sunday May 24, 2009 @12:08PM (#28075729) Homepage Journal
    e.g. [lifescientists.de]

    But he was never quite mainstream, and followers of his theorie(s) are rated to be in the vicinity of morons.

    CC.
  • by Eukariote ( 881204 ) on Sunday May 24, 2009 @12:28PM (#28075891)
    Biophotons have been a long-term research focus at the International Institute of Biophysics [lifescientists.de]. Quoting from their webpage:

    Worldwide there are about 40 scientific groups working on biophotons. The biggest association is the International Institute of Biophysics (IIB) e.V., founded in 1996 in Neuss (Germany) for an interdisciplinary approach of the understanding and the investigation of living systems.

  • Creating light (thus swamping the communication) and detecting single photons are trivial. Since they didn't do these experiments I'll have to call BS and "correlation is not causation."

    Instead I'll claim that the protozoa communicate telepathically through hyperspace, and the hyperphysical properties of the different vessels they used influenced the effectiveness of the communication.

    • by SUB7IME ( 604466 )

      Exactly. Also, I may have missed this in the paper, but why not perform the experiment with a photon-blocking device (i.e., a piece of paper or, better yet, thin lead or gold) as a control?

  • I'm not convinced (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hairykrishna ( 740240 ) on Sunday May 24, 2009 @03:02PM (#28077131)

    If this is the case the photons should be detectable. We can design experiments sensitive to the level of a single photon so this is not too much to ask.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Eukariote ( 881204 )

      If this is the case the photons should be detectable.

      Indeed. And they have been detected with sensitive photon-counting equipment and cameras. The emissions are weak and, remarkably, extend into the UV. Fritz-Albert Popp in particular has done several such experiments. For some papers, see here: http://www.lifescientists.de/ib_003e_.htm [lifescientists.de].

  • Not having RTFA, I was wondering why organisms would develop such a trait. I mean, chemical messaging on the molecular level is pretty darn fast as it is. Just think of all the neurotransmitter molecules traversing the synaptic cleft to reach their receptors as I am writing or you are reading this.

    So what could be the evolutionary advantage of intercellular electromagnetic messaging?

    • Cells in the eye are sensitive to light. I find that to be of some use. Light sensitivity is useful in other areas. For example knowing to avoid a fire, or when to bask in the sun. Faster messaging is generally a good thing. You get faster reflexes, more bandwidth.

      Maybe your thought processes are not as reliant on chemical messaging as you think.
      • by Thiez ( 1281866 )

        > Maybe your thought processes are not as reliant on chemical messaging as you think.

        But they probably are. Since neurons have no (known) mechanism for aiming and firing beams of light (and given the amount of research done on neurons, it is rather unlikely we would have overlooked such a mechanism if it did exist), all light-based communication would be omnidirectional, which is rather useless if you want to build a cool neural network.

        Also, if such communication was used by neurons, it would be easy to

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by foniksonik ( 573572 )

          Biologists recently discovered that the Komodo Lizard has poison glands, long thought to have filthy mouths full of nasty bacteria... big morphology changing poison glands - which should be un-missable. Yet they missed them for 40+ years.

          If you're not looking for something and have already discounted it's existence, you're chance of seeing it is drastically reduced.

  • Shielding? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by meehawl ( 73285 ) <meehawl.spam+sla ... m ['mai' in gap]> on Sunday May 24, 2009 @06:05PM (#28078467) Homepage Journal

    I've read through the methods and I can't understand why either the journal editors or the referees didn't insist on replicating each experimental setup with a simple sheet of lead (or other dense material) interposed between each cuvette and sufficient to block the direct path of any putative photonic communication. Without the demonstration of an expected null result for each experiment given this setup and a photonic communication hypothesis, I can't take this paper seriously.

  • It is common knowledge that plants (can) communicate through UV radiation.
    • by Corson ( 746347 )
      Troll? Man, you should start reading science books. Most of human knowledge is not on the Net but in those "old" printed books.
    • by Corson ( 746347 )
      I am talking about one of the oldest experiments carried out in plants. When one plant is injured a voltage spike is measured across the leaves of a plant sitting nearby. It was determined that UV mediate this communication between plants by alternatively placing quartz and glass separators between them. As you know, UV can pass through quartz but not regular glass.
  • Interesting idea.
    I want to omit experimental part of this work ... everyone can look in a paper and assess results themselves. Instead of this I want to mention that in my opinion paper is a little biased in direction of "bio-photons idea", and ask about two things (in paper there was not mentioned about this problems):

    + Communication needs for working simple mechanism: place where the signal is encode, reveal and point where revealed signal should be deliver, catch and interpret. Because radiation mentione

  • brr... just like "blood music", that book from Greg Bear...

Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none. -- Doug Larson

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