ScottBot.net

[via The Physics arXiv Blog]

Talk to me, sunflower.

Biophotonics is the study of ultraweak photon emissions and detections within a biological system.  There is growing evidence that cells communicate via light in order to synchronize chemical processes, and last month Serguey Mayburov suggested one possible solution to how this mechanism works.

This is pretty cool stuff; apparently cells can use light to improve their rate of mitosis by 50%.  A cell absorbs some energy and then, through some complicated nonlinear process, “responds” by emitting a burst of photons.  The response is received by other cells which in turn interpret and propagate the signal.  Mayburov compares the process to a computer system:

“… the bio-system radiation should form the periodic or quasi-periodic bursts which encode the meaningful information transferred to other biosystem. Its recognition and decoding supposedly can be performed by the methods similar to the standard ones used for noisy computer channels.”

Light affecting biology has a very well-known precedent: photosynthesis.  In fact, Mayburov claims the two mechanisms are intimately related.  Photosynthesis becomes a reversible process whereby plants absorb sunlight, play with it a bit, and then send it along its merry way as a series of coherent signals.

A cucumber ready to receive optic signals.

Reversible photosynthesis?  I can’t be the only one reminded of Jonathan Swift’s Acadamey of Lagado.  The fictional academy resided on the island of Laputa in Gulliver’s Travels, and Swift used it to satirize what he thought to be the meaningless and often immoral character of contemporary science.  Gulliver encountered a scientist trying to parse excrement into its original food sources, an engineer attempting to build a house from the roof downward, and a researcher trying to extract sun-beams from cucumbers:

“He had been Eight Years upon a Project for extracting Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers, which were to be put into Vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the Air in raw inclement Summers. He told me he did not doubt in Eight Years more he should be able to supply the Governors Gardens with Sun-shine at a reasonable Rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and intreated me to give him something as an Encouragement to Ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear Season for Cucumbers. I made him a small Present, for my Lord had furnished me with Money on Purpose, because he knew their Practice of begging from all who go to see them.”

Popular legend says that Swift was commenting here on Stephen Hales’ theory of plant respiration, which claimed in part that light entered empty areas of plants and gave them some property of growth.  Hales quoted Newton in reference to that theory:

“The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very comfortable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.”

Swift might have known that Newton quotation, but given that Hales’ Vegetable Staticks was published in 1727, a year after Gulliver’s Travels, it’s unlikely that the cucumber story was a jab at Hales.

At any rate, it’s nice to know that despite Swift’s biting criticisms, the last 300 years have seen great strides in extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers.

Tags: Biology, biophotonics, biophysics, history of science, Jonathan Swift, Literature, physics, royal society

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 11:56 am and is filed under Biology, History, Literature, Science!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.