Revisiting the mitogenetic effect of ultra-weak photon emission

A good inductor is a 4 h old (at 37°C) agar surface culture of E. coli. A Petri dish with such an inductor is placed under the recipient with no material separating it from the recipient, except the quartz bottom of the recipient Petri dish. For such an inductor optimal time of induction is 15–30 min (5 min and 60 min induction give no effect) (Rahn, 1936).

Culture: Burgundy yeast. Medium: Raisin extract (see Rahn, 1936, p. 68); raisin agar (1:2 diluted raisin extract, 3% agar). Temperature: 30°C.

Inoculum: Yeast suspension culture in raisin extract, 24 h old, is flooded over a Petri dish with sterile solid raisin agar. The dish is incubated for 24 h at 30°C and used to inoculate the recipient culture (it must be free of buds when used; otherwise an older culture should be taken).

Recipient: Cells from the culture above are washed off the dish with 5 ml of sterile water; then diluted with water 1:100, and used to flood dishes with solid raisin agar (the surplus of liquid is drained off at once). “The yeast cells are so far apart <on the agar surface> that the buds can be counted directly on the agar surface” (Rahn, 1936, p. 69).

Induction: The (freshly prepared) recipient is covered with quartz plate and induced from the top. A good inductor is an exponential phase yeast culture. Optimal time of induction for it is 30 min.

Measurement: After the end of induction, the induced recipient is incubated at 30°C for several hours. Budding index (% of cells with buds) is detected (the best effect is observed 0.5–1.5 h after the end of exposure). To calculate the number of buds, the culture is fixed with “a cotton wad with tincture of iodine” (Rahn, 1936, p. 69), placed directly in the Petri dish. “Soon after that, a cover glass can be placed on the agar surface, and the slightly-stained yeast is observed in situ, eliminating all possibility of breaking off buds by smearing on glass” (Rahn, 1936, p. 69).

The very first experiment on MGE was performed on onion roots. One of the roots (“inductor”) was located perpendicular to the other one (“recipient”), the tip of the “inductor” directed onto the “recipient” division zone and separated from it with a quartz plate (see Gurwitsch, 1923). The proportion of cells in mitosis (calculated from the number of mitotic figures) was found significantly higher on the exposed side. Outside the region of exposure the distribution of mitotic figures was uniform (Table 1).

Such experiments were repeated in other laboratories with positive (Reiter and Gabor, 1928a; Siebert, 1928a; Loos, 1930) or negative results (Rossmann, 1928; Moissejewa, 1929; Taylor and Harvey, 1931).

In a well-known critical work (Taylor and Harvey, 1931) positive results by other authors were suggested artifacts coming from natural non-uniform distribution of mitoses (The authors got fluctuations in control roots of ~50%). Still, in works by Reiter and Gabor fluctuations in control were ~20% (125 experiments), and in works by Gurwitsch et al. 10% (several hundred experiments). Both groups obtained significant results. An independent statistical analysis of all their data by 1929, was performed in Schwemmle (1929), and showed their statistical significance (see Figure 1).

The critique by Moissejewa (Moissejewa, 1929, 1931) consisted mainly of the following statements: (1) she couldn't obtain any repeatable results; (2) mechanical stress of one side of the root stimulated mitoses in it; (3) illumination of roots during the experiment setting could cause their phototrophic curving. The author also assumed that successive MGE workers took the best roots for experiments, and worse roots for controls, and also selected only those microtome sections, that conformed the expected results. Thus, she accused the groups of Gurwitsch, Reiter and Gabor and others of deliberate falsification, which is certainly the worse offense for any scientist. Unfortunately, this way of thinking is typical for those who were unable to obtain positive results themselves.

A methodically irreproachable work on onion root was later published by Paul (1933), which considered all criticism, and excluded any artifacts. The work gave doubtless positive results, but was strangely ignored in later critical reviews (Bateman, 1935). In our opinion, this work gave the final significant answer to the problem of MGE in plants [See (Rahn, 1934b, 1936) vs. (Hollaender and Schoeffel, 1931; Hollaender, 1936) for more details].

In further research MGE was also shown on yeast (Baron, 1926) and bacterial cultures (Wolf and Ras, 1931). The effect was repeated in Acs (1932), Frank (1932), Tuthill and Rahn (1933), and was not in Richards and Taylor (1932), Hollaender and Claus (1937). The total literature on MGE on these objects includes no less than 500 publications [See (Gurwitsch, 1932, 1968; Rahn, 1936; Gurwitsch and Gurwitsch, 1948) vs. (Bateman, 1935; Hollaender and Claus, 1935; Hollaender, 1936) for reviews and discussion].

Another well-known work from Taylor (Richards and Taylor, 1932), performed on yeast, was done very carefully, but missed important methodical details. In particular (see Section Methods of Observing MGE for more details and quotation):

Nothing is said about the culture physiological state, and according to their experimental tables, it was exponential phase.

MGE is observed only in lag-phase or “aging” cultures. The authors quoted this statement, but preferred to violate it.

MGE is mostly observed in suboptimal conditions, including lower temperature and poor or oversaturated media.

The recipient was put in flasks of 1.5–2 ml, and the flasks were fixed in a big container with the inductor suspension.

Yeast cultures show good MGE only at induction less than 2 h; longer induction gives suppression.

The induction could affect the culture density no earlier than 1–2 h after its end.

Thus, it was impossible to observe MGE in this work from nearly any of the conditions shown above.

Another influential work by this group (Taylor and Harvey, 1931) was devoted to physical registration of mitogenetic emission. The authors used photographic plate, and obtained no results. This is also natural, as photographic plates are inappropriate tools to detect UPE (see more in Section Detection with Physical Devices).

The most crucial work for the whole topic of MGE is the one by Hollaender and Claus (1937). It is a 100 pages manuscript, with a lot of raw tables and painstaking details. The main impression when reading it is unsurpassable difficulty of even slight attempt to try this field again. The authors were working in rubber gloves, with grounded quartz plates (they even grounded themselves), did 8 passages of every culture before it was used, and had many other precautions like that. Still, their work shows a lot of principal problems. Here we summaries its methodical details (see Section Methods of Observing MGE):

The cultures were grown on agar; but the induction and further growth were done in suspensions.

The experiment was set as follows: (1) agar cultures 15–19 h old (they later shifted to cultures 39 h old) were washed off the agar (2) with an inorganic salt solution, (3) immediately exposed to the inductor, diluted in the culture medium and incubated at 32°C. Samples were taken from the exposed culture after “repeated rapid twirling.”

For E. coli, only cultures 48 h or older (at 37°C) were proved sensitive to MGE. Anyway, the cultures become competent to MGE several hours after the end of active growth (see Section Methods of Observing MGE). Here the growth curves are not given, and the culture age was selected from irrelevant motives (“lowest number of double cells, highest percentage of live cells and ease of removal from agar” for 15 h cultures, and ability to “perform experiments of large size…without loosing…a well-defined lag-phase” for 39 h cultures, Hollaender and Claus, 1937).

The “inorganic salt solution” used as the culture medium during the exposure time, consisted of NaCl, KCl, CaCl2, and water. No other worker tried such a specific medium for induction.

Recipient cultures have certain periods of sensitivity to the induction. Thus, 24 h yeast cultures are sensitive immediately after plating on the new medium, and 6-day cultures—2 h later. No MGE can be seen if the recipient is induced outside this period. Here this was not checked at all.

Induction was done (1) in small cups 2 cm in diameter and 1–2 cm high at 37°C (2) with constant stirring of the recipient, and (3) lasted from 5 s to 12 min.

Suspension cultures should be induced in very thin layers (<0.5 mm). No effect can be obtained at thicker suspensions.

“Constant stirring” and “rapid twirling” of the recipient culture are very specific conditions. No other worker ever tried MGE under them.