Revisiting the mitogenetic effect of ultra-weak photon emission

As we tried to show in an evidence-based way, there are no serious works disproving MGE. The “common opinion” that MGE is “pathological science” (Hall, 1989; “Pathological Science”2) is a personal belief of a few influential scientists from the past (Bateman, 1935; Anonim, 1937; Hollaender and Claus, 1937), without any factual data, or with its very doubtful interpretation.

One cannot but agree that a number of works “confirming” MGE cannot be accounted as serious. As Hollaender wrote, “It is doubly unfortunate that the problem has attracted some workers who, apparently, see in the problem only an opportunity to deal in the spectacular” (Hollaender, 1936). A number of phenomena initially attributed to MGE were later shown to be either artifacts or of purely chemical origin [e.g., quorum sensing factors (Hogan, 2006; Shank and Kolter, 2009), CO2 (Hall et al., 2010; Volodyaev et al., 2013) or NH3-mediated interaction (Palková et al., 1997)].

Besides, in the present “open information” world the word “mitogenetic” is frequently used by people aside from science, what certainly discredits the topic in common opinion.

At the same time a number of “careful but negative” results, obtained by “a few Western authors” (Quickenden and Tilbury, 1985) came out strong against the phenomenon. Most of them were reviewed here in detail, to show principal methodical points, which prevented them from observing MGE. As Rahn wrote, “several investigators have claimed that their negative results disprove the positive results of others. That is a fallacy. When two investigators obtain different results, it does not prove that one has been right and the other wrong, it proves only that they didn't make the same experiment, that somewhere the conditions were different” (Rahn, 1934b).

There were also a number of very critical reviews clearly preconceived pro any (even badly done) negative works and contra any positive results of other workers. Thus, a review by Bateman (Bateman, 1935) was mostly based on finding disagreement between different “positive” works on MGE and debating with Gurwitsch's reasoning. Somehow the author mentioned only discrediting “positive” works, skipped any serious investigations (Acs, 1932; Frank, 1932; Tuthill and Rahn, 1933; Wolf and Ras, 1933), and regarded all “negative” works (discussed above) as the final disproof. An influential note in Nature (Anonim, 1937) totally based on (Hollaender and Claus, 1937), is another example of non-objective attitude, forming opinion.

Quickenden et al. are also quite critical in their reviews, but mix different areas. The three works they are always quoting as the final disproof are (Lorentz, 1929; Grey and Ouellet, 1933; Hollaender and Claus, 1937). Of them (Lorentz, 1929; Grey and Ouellet, 1933) were devoted to physical registration of UPE and had no biological experiments done. Thus, their negative results were utterly due to low sensitivity of their technique. The third work (Hollaender and Claus, 1937) was described above in detail.

Of the “early works,” the most influential critical publications appeared right before WWII, and happened to be the “aftertaste” of this topic for the postwar science. Although a number of very good “positive” works appeared simultaneously, they were too late to gain traction before the War, and too early to be remembered after it. It can only be explained by this misfortune that a full appreciation of Audubert's work by Norrish (the Chair of Physical Chemistry at Cambridge University) and Vavilov (the President of The USSR Academy of Sciences at that time), were not a passport for a new wave of general research.

The post-war world was soon bound up in molecular biology. A few groups that were interested in photon emission, were either unnoticed (the groups of Anna Gurwitsch and Konev) or made their own revelations and shifted to other topics (Tarusov, Vladimirov, Zhuravlev).

This oblivion was redoubled by the language barrier and the Cold war, which kept Soviet and Western science apart. We have mentioned a number of important works by soviet biophysicists, which are mostly unknown even now.

Difficulties in achieving stable MGE are surely the most important negative factor for its acceptance. If MGE is so universal, why is it so difficult to “catch,” requiring so many peculiar actions? This is a standard question and a frequent “argument” against MGE. Although obviously no speculation is an evidence in experimental science, this point is really confusing.

Yet, in our opinion, the uncertainty of MGE is its natural and understandable property. Indeed, nearly every object used in MGE experiments consists of a huge number of cells. Characteristic distance between cells in culture is 10−6–10−4 m. Any external inductor is never closer to the recipient than 10−3–10−2 m, and separated with a few reflecting interfaces (quartz-air, quartz-liquid etc.). Thus, to get a detectable MGE, a worker needs to prepare the following conditions:

The inductor culture must be “strong” enough to produce MGE at such unnatural distances.

The internal MGE in the recipient culture should be possibly suppressed (but without damage).

The (extremely weak) MGE signal must be “preserved” from external disturbances “on its way” to the recipient.

Following these plain demands, one can easily understand the comprehensive conditions needed for MGE (see Section Methods of Observing MGE), including:

Careful selection of inductors and minimization of the distance inductor–recipient;

Still more careful preparation of recipients, including special phases of the culture itself and its “maternal culture” (the one it was seeded from);

Creating special, and even unnatural conditions for the recipient, including lower temperature, weakened medium, low culture density, etc., in such a way to get it “wakened,” but not defective;

Special precautions, like lower external light, no UV, very thin layers of the recipient culture, quartz of excellent purity, etc.

Looking back, it seems much more surprising that the MGE could ever be observed, than that it turned out so capricious.

Let us take the most skeptical position and join those who claim that the basic mitogenetic effect does not exist at all. Then why were so many conclusions based exclusively on the biological detection of the “non-existing” phenomenon confirmed with physical methods later? Let us briefly enumerate the main ones:

Photon emission from onion roots, cleaving eggs, early chicken embryos, budding yeast, excited nerves, working heart, malignant tumors and several chemical reactions, first discovered with the use of biological “detectors,” was later confirmed by physical measurements (Quickenden and Que Hee, 1974; Tilbury, 1992; Beloussov et al., 1997, 2000, 2002; Beloussov, 2002; Volodyaev and Beloussov, 2007) (see Figures 4–6).

The phenomenon of “degradational radiation” (see Section MGE as a Non-invasive Probe for Detecting Physiological and Pathological States of Cells and Tissues) was also reproduced by physical methods (Beloussov, 2002; Volodyaev and Beloussov, 2007) (see Figure 5).

The predicted spectral range of mitogenetic radiation was confirmed by physical devises (Troitskii et al., 1961; Gurwitsch et al., 1965; Quickenden and Que Hee, 1976; Quickenden and Tilbury, 1991; Tilbury and Quickenden, 1992).

Already in 1930-s mitogenetic radiation was concluded to be of intermittent character and consist of millisecond flashes. Recently this was confirmed by direct observations (Beloussov and Volodyaev, 2013) (see Section Can UPE Transfer Information? and Figures 4–7).

A personal reminiscence of one of the authors (LB): “When studying UPE from chicken embryos in Prof. Popp's lab (with the use of PMT), I found significant UPE in UV range up to the 2nd day of incubation (Beloussov et al., 1997). As I recognized later, just the same emission period was detected with the use of the onion root “detector” as far as in 1920-s.”

What might be even more important than these particular coincidences, are the above-mentioned generalizations. The presently well-established role of excited and non-equilibrium states of biomolecules and their complexes, was claimed by the “mitogenetic school” long before any other references. Taking into account that at least some of these data (first of all the data on tumor pathology) are not only of academic, but also of applicatory values, it would be, by the authors' opinion, unpardonable to leave apart this direction of research as false. Rather, we are dealing with situation which may be compared with reaching an unknown land in a small boat without a reliable navigation and hence without a certainty that the land can be reached at any next attempt. Nevertheless, the land is likely to exist, and the navigation is considerably improved. Thus, let us try to outline a kind of road map for the further work in this field.

If someone decides to address this topic again, they should consider a few important points.

MGE cannot be detected off the cuff. There are plenty of pitfalls on the way, and even a definitely positive try can fail to be reproduced. One has to take into account both positive and negative experience of other workers, and study thoroughly all methodical details and precautions.

Even this might not be enough. As Rahn writes, “It must be stated with perfect frankness that biological detectors sometimes fail for unknown reasons…These occasional failures have nothing to do with the error of the method. When mitogenetic effects are observed, they are outside the limits of error” (Rahn, 1936).