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

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[SUB7IME]

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.

Prove it.

[jeffb (2.718)]

"Mathematics reserves the right for universal truths."

^

Godel might have something to say about that.

In the most universal sense.

Evolution is smarter than you are.

[JoshuaZ]

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.

Please don't misapply Godel's theorems

[JoshuaZ]

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.

International Institute of Biophysics

[Eukariote]

Biophotons have been a long-term research focus at the International Institute of Biophysics. 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.

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.