Revisiting the mitogenetic effect of ultra-weak photon emission

Abstract

This paper reviews the 90 years long controversial history of the so-called “mitogenetic radiation,” the first case of non-chemical distant interactions, reported by Gurwitsch (1923). It was soon described as ultraweak UV, emitted by a number of biological systems, and stimulating mitosis in “competent” (in this sense) cells. In the following 20 years this phenomenon attracted enormous interest of the scientific community, and gave rise to more than 700 publications around the world. Yet, this wave of research vanished after several ostensibly disproving works in late 1930-s, and was not resumed later, regardless of quite serious grounds for that. The authors discuss separately two aspects of the problem: (1) do living organisms emit ultraweak radiation in the UV range (irrespective of whether it has any biological role), and (2) are there any real effects of this ultraweak photon emission (UPE) upon cell division and/or other biological functions? Analysis of the available data permits to conclude, that UV fraction of UPE should be regarded real, while its biological effects are difficult to reproduce. This causes a paradox. A number of presently known qualities of UPE were initially discovered (predicted?) by the “early workers” on the basis of biological effects. Yet the qualities they discovered were proved later (the UV component of UPE, the sources of UPE among biological systems, etc…), while the biological effect they used for UPE “detection” remains questionable. Importance of this area for basic biology and medicine, and potential usefulness of UPE as a non-invasive research method, invite scientists to attack this problem again, applying powerful research facilities of modern science. Yet, because of complexity and uncertainty of the problem, further progress in this area demands comprehensive examination of both positive and negative works, with particular attention to their methodical details.

Oxidative species-induced excitonic transport in tubulin aromatic networks: Potential implications for neurodegenerative disease

“…These photon signals are mostly observed in the visible spectrum, often showing a broad peak in the 500-700 nm region, which overlaps with the emission wavelength of triplet carbonyl and the dimol reaction of singlet oxygen. Historically controversial works of Gurwitsch suggest that there exist photon emissions from cells lying in the range of the ultraviolet (UV) wavelength of light (190 -250 nm) [14], with some modern evidence for longer UV wavelengths (250 -390 nm) [15][16][17][18][19] in biological photon emission. Other researchers have reported measurements of photons throughout the UV, visible, and infrared (IR) parts of the electromagnetic spectrum [20][21][22] and in tumor cells as energetic as 210 nm [23].…”

On The Existence of The DNA Resonance Code and Its Possible Mechanistic Connection to The Neural Code

“…He postulated the existence of the morphogenic field (Gurwitsch, 1922) responsible for creation of the shape of the body in 1922, proved the existence of such a field (Alexander and Gurwitsch, 1925;Beloussov et al, 2004;Gurwitsch, 1923Gurwitsch, , 1924Michael Lipkind, 1998; and characterized its spectral properties (Protoplasma, 1932). His results were reproduced by Anna Gurwitch (Gurwitsch, 1968;Gurwitsch and Gurwitsch, 1991) Burlakov (Burlakov et al, 2000) and over 100 works of others, reviewed in references (Quickenden and Que Hee, 1974;Volodyaev and Beloussov, 2015), and his scientific school continues now (Beloussov et al, 2004). Alexander Gurwitsch was nominated for the Nobel Prize 11 times.…”

Historical review of early researches on mitogenetic radiation: from discovery to cancer diagnostics

“…[3,23], and in Ref. [28], we also recommend the critical review of some methods used in the first decade of experiments [79]. The majority of early works presented in our review were published with detailed protocols and descriptions of methods, and we consider their results worth of serious attention.…”

“…After twenty five years of successful development of this research area the studies on mitogenetic radiation completely ceased by the late 40s: in Europe they were interrupted at the beginning of the World War II; the "Iron Curtain" strengthened the prejudice against this topic as to obscurantism of "Soviet science"; in the USSR, where this field of research had been developed the most extensively since the beginning, the researches were persecuted altogether with genetics after the decisions of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1948, see details in [28]. Difficulties in physical detection of ultraweak UV-radiation also contributed to the bias against these researches: photoelectric elements and photographic plates had too low sensitivity to register mitogenetic radiation (for instance, [29,30]), and the best modified gas-discharge counters registered it with rather low signal/noise ratio [12,13,21,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37].…”

“…Contemporary works are published mainly in English and available for the wide readership. They are clearly described in several reviews [28,57,[68][69][70][71][72], and here we overview them rather briefly.…”