Bioelectric Fields at the Beginnings of Life

The underlying premise here is that microtubules, as well as actin and other polymers, especially if coupled to structures which generate very large electrical potentials, such as mitochondria, or any other membrane which can generate both a static, as well as an oscillating electric field and say, voltage sensitive ion channels, could be part a self-organizing field-based dissipating structure. The antecedents of this system would thus come from prokaryotes, which certainly contain all the right ingredients (chemiosmotic coupling, gradients, ion channels, cytoskeleton, etc.)—as well as being highly cooperative. Although morphogenetic bioelectric field research is focused more on ion channels and gap junctions in more modern cells, as cells can be viewed as coupled resonant structures, it would seem logical that any ion channel, or gap junction, is going to be electronically coupled to other structures near it—which must include the cytoskeleton and mitochondria.

This then leads us back to one of the most difficult questions in biology, what is consciousness and how do anesthetics work? Although there are several classical ones, quantum-based theories are being considered. Single-celled eukaryotes display a high level of intelligence and adaptability, which may involve their cytoskeleton as a kind of processing unit; one explanation of anesthesia is that it involves mild disruption of microtubules—and these drugs can inhibit single-celled creatures.

However, these drugs do have many other targets as well. Emerging theoretical calculations are supporting the observation that magnetic fields can influence microtubule structure, and that this is related to a quantum property called spin and a radical pair mechanism.57 This would of course fit well with the idea of scale-free cognition as proposed by Levin.58 It would also fit with field-based theories of the mind.59 Interestingly, some anesthetics also inhibit signaling in plants, such as in the Venus fly trap, which do not have neurons, but do have ion channels60—perhaps hinting at a more ancient common mechanism.

It would therefore seem that as complexity arose, the original simpler systems would have formed the basis of larger and larger entities and become more robust. The composite integration of their manifold bioelectric fields not only provides shape, but perhaps also the intelligence that all organisms display—with perhaps the highest expression being consciousness and awareness.

In summary, the movement of any charged entity, whether it be an electron, proton, or large ion, will create a field as it moves, and then an electrostatic field if there is an uneven charge distribution across a barrier. Conditions characterized by the movement of ions may well have been present in something like an alkaline thermal vent on the immediate post-Hadean earth resulting in large electrochemical potential. These fields could have been pivotal in organizing the chemicals and water present to form far from equilibrium dissipative structures. Critically, these new structures could have held information about the environment and due to natural selection could have started to evolve, leading to increasing complexity, cooperation, adaptability, and robustness (Fig. 2).

If extant life does harbor an ethereal field skeleton as an echo of life's beginnings, what might it tell us? For instance, does it shed light on aging, a definition of life, quantum effects in biology, biological uncoupling of gradients, death, viruses, astrobiology, and even the origins of cancer?

If life started as a kind of negative entropic dissipative “vortex” reinforced by information containing electric fields, it might suggest not only a minimal “quanta” of life, but also a limited existence if its constituents degraded. Critically, because a damaged unit could potentially damage other units (hence stopping dissipation), for instance via oxidative or reductive stress, controlled termination could have been selected for, as, by doing this, it enabled other systems to survive and therefore maintain dissipation. It perhaps also redefines what we mean by “inflammation”; if it cannot be fixed, remove it, but with the novel viewpoint that it is acting at the global level—everything, from the scale of molecules all the way up to whole species is replaceable, as long as life itself survives.61

The new field of quantum dissipative adaptation does suggest that this approach is applicable to life.62 In this regard, controlled death is actually extremely ancient, and evolved in prokaryotes.63 This implies that “dying for the greater good” has probably been around since life started.

One way to view this could be related to Le Chatelier theories on networks under perturbation, where some parts of the network fail, and the system reroutes to maintain stability.64 On the largest scale, that of the earth, life can thus be viewed as the fourth geosphere, in effect, every subcomponent, from molecules, all the way up to species is disposable, but is part of adaptive dissipative system called life.18 It has been suggested that a key component of the ability of cells to organize and adapt to stress is via forming bioelectric networks.58 In this sense, bioelectricity transfers information about individual “quanta” of life and how well they are dissipating energy: when they start to fail, selection removes them. Aging and death of individual components are enshrined in the process, of which the loss of the ability to maintain a bioelectric field must be central.

The ethereal skeleton concept underlying the origins of the morphogenetic field suggests not only what we might define as life, but perhaps also the order in which things occurred at the beginning. Clearly a bucket full of chemicals is not life, even if they are the right ones. They need organizing and be able to continually dissipate energy and have the capacity to renew when broken. Even if you put electric currents through this bucket of chemicals and get some reorganization and chemistry, you do not get life. The chemicals need to be organized and this seems to have been a sticking point for many theories on the origins of life. However, if we think of information in fields, then we may have a way out of this.

In terms of electrodynamics, the shape is information as dictated by the flow of charged particles and thus vectored fields. The field could thus exert “force” on any charged molecules, and thus provide a mechanism for condensing them into a shape, which could provide a self-reinforcing structure to dissipate energy by enhancing a flow of ions—but the most stable would be those that enhance properties that say, catalyze reactions that further enhance dissipation—such as charge separation, in effect, a stable microstate.

Now of course, this could just exist as a quasi-stable state if nothing changed, but if some memory of the structure could be created, for instance, via a polymer that was organized by the field that enabled the molecule to persist during natural variations that would normally result in dissolution of the structure, this could provide something for natural selection to work on—especially if these field enhanced critical quantum effects like water order. The likelihood of this also increases with the advent of self-organizing membranes driven by entropy.

It is beyond the scope of this article to go into greater detail about the fine detail of the origins of life, but the concept that the shape of a field was determined by ion flow does suggest that “information” could have been a starting point that helped organize metabolism—but it may not have required specific “information molecules” to evolve first. It would suggest that they coevolved through natural selection to provide the building blocks to maintain the field memory of the shape. This shape is still seen today, but in a vastly more complex form, for instance, in the V-ATPase, and of course up the scale to individual cells, and multicellular organisms such as ourselves.

However, it is possible that “true cellular life” began when multiple energy extracting voltage sensitive ion channels combined to provide a more intricate field that “remembered” the most efficient dissipative alignment. This might suggest that enzymatic polymers may have been a very early part of life, which eventually became a cytoskeleton, which, of course, is key in cellular shape. Although it is probably almost impossible to ascertain what polymers may have existed at the beginning, the ability of many molecules to form polymers is perhaps suggestive. Key in this is that they may have started out with one function, but with time, they adapted to another role. In short, many of the polymers we see today, from DNA to tubulin, may have had quite a different role billions of years ago.

In a way, it could be argued that the “ethereal skeleton to the morphogenetic field” paradigm might also be called “field ontogeny recapitulates field phylogeny.” This of course does strongly suggest the extent that biology might be using significant quantum effects, especially if approached from the QFT concept.

What is becoming clear is that the electron transport chain and its components seem to be reliant on quantum effects such as tunneling. For example, it is the role of FeS proteins with specific quantum spin properties interacting with the emerging importance of ordered water that could be key.65 Of particular relevance is the application of QED theory and the ability of EM fields to interact near charged surfaces to induce coherence resulting in EZ (ordered) water that could have profound and organizing effects on chemistry in biology, in particular, for instance, aiding tunneling (chapter 5 in Fels et al.12). Indeed, the principle of ENAQT is becoming increasingly recognized as playing a role in biology, for instance, in exciton transfer in chromophore chains.33

Some authors are claiming that, at least in modern cells, it is likely that the interaction between the electron motive force generated by mitochondria, microtubule oscillations, and the induction of water order is essential in cell health, and when mitochondria malfunction, it can lead to conditions like cancer.66 Certainly, mitochondrial function has long been thought to play a key role in aging, with maintenance of the ETC being pivotal; this is borne out by recent parabiosis data whereby the introduction of young blood into an aged organism prominently upregulates components of the ETC in multiple organs, leading to a healthier phenotype.67

As previously discussed, a key link between fields and function is also suggested by the role of quantum spin; for example, the role of photons, cryptochromes, and ROS production and navigation, as well as perhaps a far more basic role in controlling oxidative stress via spin-correlated radical pairs influenced by magnetic fields.68 Although it could be argued that evolution may have selective enhanced and amplified quantum effects to improve biological function once life started, it may also be possible that it was a key requisite right at the beginning.

There is perhaps another aspect to life that could be linked to bioelectricity, and its creation, and that is uncoupling. Uncoupling, in biology, is generally regarded as the process whereby the generation of high energy chemicals, such as ATP, is uncoupled from an ion gradient produced by the flow of electrons down an electron transfer chain; the most common ion is of course a proton, but many other ions are also “recycled.” The process has been described as “wasteful,” as 30% or more of the energy is apparently lost, even in prokaryotes, reducing growth by as much as three times. Although it clearly has roles in signaling, heat generation and modulating oxidative stress,69,70 it could also be argued that it represents a dissipative process that generates electric fields.

This of course brings us back to a good candidate for a structure that could have generated consistent electric fields on a prebiotic earth: an alkaline thermal vent fed by a constant flow of ions. Semiconducting compounds, such as FeS, would have been key in enabling flow of electrons, while the fields generated could have influenced potentially important quantum effects, such as water order that would have aided proton movement. The charge separation so generated would also act to concentrate prebiotic compounds so enabling a dissipative, and perhaps, coherent “condensate” to form that according to thermodynamics, would become self-organizing, especially if some kind of resonating cavity was formed.

Indeed, the ability of some bacteria to generate excitons in very low levels of light has been used to investigate quantum effects in biology by exposing them to quantized light in an optical cavity light system; the data suggest that they could become entangled, and amazingly, they remain alive.71 Critically, thermal vents emit light, particularly at the longer wavelengths.72

So, although highly speculative, the generation of light in thermal vents could have also played a role in generating coherent structure. The fields so generated could react, and hold, information about the environment, so giving rise to the very first morphogenetic fields—they would also be able to act as electrophoretic guides. In this model, organization of “memory” molecules would follow as they would allow information to be captured and retained and, despite the energy cost, would enable natural selection and increased dissipative efficiency that would drive complexity according to the information cycle of Brillouin.73

Although it could be predicted that one of the very first structures to evolve would be an ion channel, which would be in keeping with several other theories on the origins of life, molecules that were key in shape, such as the precursors to microtubules, could also have been pivotal. This very much points toward “fields before genetics.”

The “ethereal skeleton” concept may help in the search for life beyond our planet. As has often been said, looking for it depends on what we think we are looking for, which itself depends on our definition of life and thus where we should look. As is probably entirely predictable because we tend to base our ideas on our own biology, is it carbon based, and does it require water? What about the energy source or temperature range, and would it require an electron acceptor? The concept of a field-based life form might give us some further clues. It might provide us with an insight that different sets of molecules, but still organized by a field, could well be life if they could replicate and evolve.

We have, in another article, discussed how thermodynamics and the quantum world could, perhaps, explain inflammation and death as inflammation describes a process to try and restore a functional dissipative structure following stress.61 When viewed from the field concept, it would suggest that there comes a point when an organism can no longer maintain a dissipative field, either because its structure become badly damaged, or it can no longer repair it, with the latter ability decreasing with age; it therefore dies. However, many organisms, or their eggs/spores, can survive quite harsh conditions. This raises the question of whether biological entities that cannot generate their own fields such as viruses are actually “alive”; do they only become “alive” when in a cell generating a field, or are they never truly alive? Mature human red blood cells do not contain DNA, but most would say they are alive, even if they cannot replicate.

What does seem to be key is that replication of life requires a structure that can, when ready, dissipate energy, but to grow and repair it also requires a polymer containing the instructions to build new bits, which perhaps suggests a key component of the definition life is that it can rebuild damaged components, enabling it to maintain dissipation over extended periods of time and robustness to adapt to variations in the environment.

It has been suggested that cancer cells exhibit disturbed EM coherence that is related to mitochondrial dysfunction.74 It is also known that a key feature of many cancer cells is that they stop communicating properly, which is often associated with changes in gap junction function and connexins; mortality from cancer rapidly increases following metastasis.75 It is thus relevant that prokaryotes have precursors to gap junctions,76 cytoskeletal components,49 and nanotubes.77 In short, as discussed in an earlier section, cooperation has been around for billions of years and is perhaps the “norm” rather than a single-celled existence. However, many prokaryotic species do have single-celled, noncooperative stages, which are usually associated with reproduction and survival of harsh conditions. Intriguingly, most eukaryotes also have single-celled stages.

So could evolution be viewed differently, cooperation first, and then survival of species via single-celled dispersal? It could be argued that the polycellular structure of a thermal vent could have been an ideal hive-styled incubator, where life got going, not in an individual cell, but all at once across 1000s of resonating cavities; it is likely that bioelectric communication would have been essential for this. Although these alkaline thermal vents can last for 1,000s of years,34 plate tectonics and subduction would mean that they would eventually change, applying a selective pressure. Maybe those cells that had evolved to maintain their own field shapes by using alternative energy sources were able to move, either directly, or by going into a state of suspension, and relocate. The resemblance to metastasis is thus uncanny.

The demonstration of the importance of bioelectric fields has led to the concept that these fields might be reprogrammed to control cancer—especially as these fields could define shape and the position of cells in a multicellular organism. Key in this are ion channels.78 Further insight may perhaps be gleaned from data that suggest an immortalized cell can undergo oncogenic transformation by upregulating glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase activity as it bolsters antioxidant and nucleotide synthesis, tellingly, this can also be mimicked by simply supplying the cell with exogenous antioxidants and nucleosides.79 This would suggest that metabolic reprogramming, and bioelectric fields, are closely linked, as the energy state, redox, and ion channel function are all coupled. It might even hint that the ability to make polymers that could act as blueprints for structures was a pivotal event in enabling single cells to survive.

Perhaps the final piece of the puzzle here is that calorie restriction has long been known to have anticancer effects.80 In effect, under energy restriction, it appears that cells become more cooperative, but with extra energy, they tend to go off and do their own thing and replicate; thermodynamically, this is just another way of dissipating. Tellingly, many tumors exhibit aerobic glycolysis, the so called “Warburg effect,” which is associated with acidification of their microenvironment, but the cell has a more alkaline interior; this seems to have many benefits for the tumor, including abstraction of energy via ATPases at the plasma membrane.81