Cells May Communicate Through Light

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.'"

Comments

Fritz-Albert Popp (almost) always said this ...

[foobsr]

e.g.

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

CC.

I'm not convinced

[hairykrishna]

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:I'm not convinced

[Eukariote]

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.

Shielding?

[meehawl]

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.

Re:Evolution should not be anthropomorphized.

[JoshuaZ]

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 slightly different degrees of access and each password was similar to passwords that gave access to similar areas. That's still a not good analogy but it is better. But genetic algorithms != brute force. The same way, evolution is not brute force at all.

Re:Evolutionary rationale

[foniksonik]

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.