Revisiting the mitogenetic effect of ultra-weak photon emission

A new type of photo sensitive technique, suggested by Rajewsky (1931), and soon reproduced by Frank (Frank and Rodionow, 1931), and others (Lorentz, 1929; Taylor and Harvey, 1931), was based on modified Geiger-Muller counters. Such a counter had a quartz window and a special photosensitive layer spread over the cathode inside the counter tube. Light quanta that got through the quartz window and hit the cathode, gave rise to a discharge in the counter, and were thus detected. These devices were constructed manually, and demanded sophisticated adjustment, with no standard procedures or criteria. Naturally, they had very different sensitivity, and even approaches to estimate it.

In Frank and Rodionow (1931), Rajewsky (1931), Siebert and Seffert (1933), UPE from different MGE inductors was detected successfully. Its intensity was 10–103 quanta/cm2/s. In Lorentz (1929), Schreiber and Friedrich (1930), Taylor and Harvey (1931), Kreuchen and Bateman (1932), Seyfert (1932), Grey and Ouellet (1933), Hollaender and Claus (1937) the results were negative. Most of these authors claimed their devices to have very high sensitivity, and meant their results to be a disproval of MGE. Yet, the best, and methodically perfect works on this topic, done by Barth (1934), Grebe et al. (1938), and Audubert (1939), gave the final answer to this problem:

UPE from many biological objects was shown (blood of healthy people, growing yeast and bacterial cultures, tumors, etc.);

Its intensity estimate was the same as in Frank and Rodionow (1931), Rajewsky (1931)—10–103 quanta/cm2/s;

It correlated with biological MGE, i.e., “active” MGE inductors gave UPE, and “passive” did not.

In Barth (1934) previous failures to detect UPE were discussed in detail, and principal technical problems and artifacts were outlined. In particular:

Wrong position of the cathode, which produced interference from electrostatic fields (Lorentz, 1929);

Small size of the cathode (Kreuchen and Bateman, 1932), or its wrong position (Seyfert, 1932) which gave insufficient angle of light collection, and low signal / noise ratio;

Too high leakage resistance, which led to electrical breakups, and noise increase (Kreuchen and Bateman, 1932);

[See (Bateman, 1935; Hollaender and Claus, 1935) vs. (Barth, 1934; Rahn, 1936; Audubert, 1939; Gurwitsch and Gurwitsch, 1948) for more discussion].

It is probably no need and even impossible to summarize here the present-day situation around UPE from living objects. The very fact of it is well-established, and its generally accepted mechanism is oxidative free radical processes with mostly lipid substrates (Boveris et al., 1981; Popp et al., 1988; Vladimirov and Proskurnina, 2009; Cifra and Pospíšil, 2014).

Standard and irrefutable registration of UPE became possible after the photomultiplier tubes (PMT) were invented (1930-s–1940-s), and developed to their maximum efficiency (1940-s–1950-s). The first generally known publications on UPE were done on plants by Colli and Facchini (1954), and on animal tissues by the group of Tarusov (Tarusov et al., 1961a,b). Unfortunately, the 1930-s works on Geiger-Muller counters described above, are usually not remembered in this respect, although the first credible detections are surely belonging to them.

Another regrettable thing is that the absolute majority of publications by Tarusov and coworkers from 1960-s to 1970-s were published in Russian and are inaccessible for English-reading researchers even as citations [See (Slawinska and Slawinski, 1983; Vladimirov and Proskurnina, 2009; Voeikov, 2010) for a minimal list of those publications].

UPE from animal (Vladimirov and Litvin, 1959; Tarusov et al., 1961a) and plant (Vladimirov and Litvin, 1959) tissues;

Its fermentative and non-fermentative mechanisms (Popov and Tarusov, 1963; Zhuravlev, 1973);

For more detail see reviews (Vladimirov, 1966; Tarusov et al, 1967). Present day reviews can be seen in Vladimirov and Proskurnina (2009), Voeikov (2010), Cifra and Pospíšil (2014), Pospíšil (2014).

The UV component of UPE was also shown in a number of works (Troitskii et al., 1961; Gurwitsch et al., 1965). In an extensive work (Konev et al., 1966) the group of Konev detected UPE from several dozens of various species, ranging from bacteria to vertebrates and higher plants. The mechanism of the UV emission was not discovered in detail, but it was shown different from lipid peroxidation, and supposedly connected to protein synthesis (Konev et al., 1963).

Later, in a vast series of works, Quickenden et al. tried to verify phenomena of both MGE and UPE. The first attempt failed due to low sensitivity of the photo-measuring device (Metcalf and Quickenden, 1967), but later the authors managed to detect UPE from growing yeast cultures (Quickenden and Que Hee, 1974). In further works by this group the following facts were demonstrated:

All microorganism cultures tested [S. cerevisiae (Quickenden and Que Hee, 1974, 1976; Quickenden and Tilbury, 1983, 1991), S. pombe (Quickenden et al., 1985), C. utilis (Tilbury and Quickenden, 1992), E. coli (Tilbury and Quickenden, 1988)] possess growth-dependent UPE.

UPE of growing cultures (start, exponential phase; max, around half-maximum density; duration, ~1 day; the peak has 1 or 2 distinct maxima).

UPE of stationary cultures (start, post-diauxic, or stationary phase (2–8 days old); duration, several days or more; variable dynamics).

UPE has broad spectra at least from 200 to 600 nm with definite UV component for growing cultures (Figure 3).

UV component, unidentified. Not lipid peroxidation; not cosmic-rays excited fluorescence; not major biochemical reactions or protein synthesis. Oxygen dependent. The authors underline that “ultraviolet emissions are of similar intensity and wavelength to those designated as mitogenetic radiation by Gurwitsch.” They also suggest “oxidative side reactions associated with protein synthesis” as a possible source of this emission (Tilbury and Quickenden, 1992).

The last two facts cannot be well explained now, but might help to find the source of the UV component in future.

Thus, by this time UPE from living systems is a well-established fact. However, whether it can be connected to the mitogenetic effect, i.e., whether UPE can physically transmit (any) signal in real conditions, remains an open question.

There is a number of woks published during the whole period since 1920-s with various considerations pro and contra feasibility of UPE-based signaling. Here we adduce the most important of them.

UPE of exactly this intensity is presently well established, but its UV component is mostly doubted (Cifra and Pospíšil, 2014). Yet, we consider the works by the groups of Konev and Quickenden a definite proof of its existence (see Section Newer Works on UPE).

This hypothesis was based on theoretical considerations and “mitogenetic spectra” (Gurwitsch and Gurwitsch, 1934, 1959).

It is well proven now, but only for visible UPE. Yet there are no established mechanisms for generation of UV quanta in biological systems (Cifra and Pospíšil, 2014).

This is based on experiments with “interrupted induction” (see Section The experimental setup). From them the authors concluded, that the “mitogenetic signal” from some inductors (microbial cultures, nerves, muscles, etc.) was a series of very short pulses (~10−3 s) coming at the frequency of ~101–102 Hz. On the contrary, radiation of malignant tumors was concluded continuous (Gurwitsch and Gurwitsch, 1934).