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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.'"

1 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. I'm not convinced by hairykrishna · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    "Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman