The Geometry The Nucleus

violet (up to about 200 nm). . . . There are distinct correlations
of photon intensity and conformational states
of DNA, or DNase activity during meiosis. At present
there exists no further doubt about the physiological
character of biophoton emission, since it exhibits just
the same temperature dependence as it is characteristic
for most of the physiological functions [Popp 1986].
Popp has constructed a laboratory means to measure the
low-level luminescence, which corresponds to the intensity
of a candle at a distance of about 10 kilometers, and this
has allowed him to reap a rich amount of experimental data
in exploring "mitogenic radiation."
Popp is building on much earlier work by the Germaneducated
Russian scientist Alexander Curwitsch, who discovered
mitogenic radiation as a lawful extension of applying
the classical scientific conception of the electromagnetic
field to biological phenomena. In a 1912 paper, Gurwitsch
first introduced the conception of the biological field.
Since genes act in different cells in a coordinated fashion,
as in the development of certain tissue-specific cell lines
from the same embryo, obviously there is some type of
supracellular command.
Beginning in 1904, Curwitsch began to study the morphological
field in various embryos. In a series of experiments
beginning with research on the development of shark brains
in 1912, Gurwitsch studied the coordination of large numbers
of cells that behaved as a common suprageometric
living form: the biological field. He pursued his work on
sea urchin eggs and began to study the remarkable synchronization
of mitosis in a developing living form. Up
through a certain stage of divisions of the blastomeres, all
cell divisions are synchronous and produce the same results,
as they share a common surface. Then, the mitotic
divisions begin to exhibit cellular differentiation. How is
this highly complex process coordinated?
Gurwitsch came to the conclusion that mitosis is regulated
through a radiation phenomenon. Early in the 1920s, he
studied the meristems of onion roots. Plant meristems are
the areas with one of the highest mitotic indices in the living
world (the mitotic index is the ratio between the number of
cells undergoing mitosis to the total number of cells).
Through these famous experiments, Gurwitsch developed
a cellular resonance theory based upon a conception of
what he called mitogenic radiation. He found that the potential
for mitosis is relative to the size of the cell colony.
Gurwitsch demonstrated that the radiation was in the
ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. In his
experiment, he observed a large increase in the number of
cell divisions of an onion root, when a second onion root
was brought near to the first. When quartz glass, which
does not absorb in the ultraviolet region, is placed between
the two onion roots, the enhanced cell divisions occurred
just as if there were no glass separating them. However,
when normal ultraviolet-proof window glass was placed
between the two onion roots, the "mitogenic effect"
stopped. After World War II, as a result of the development
of sensitive photon counters, scientists began to detect
extremely weak emissions from dividing animal and plant
cells.
Among the most fruitful explorations of radiation phenomena
in cell division are those of Professor Sydney Webb,
who has conducted a several-decades-long exploration of
the harmonic properties of living cells across the cell division
cycle. He found that when cells were exposed as aerosols
to periods of semidehydration and various doses of
electromagnetic radiation, the cells could not tolerate simultaneous
"step-down" changes in both their carbon and
nitrogen supply until at least one cell division had been
allowed to occur in the altered nutritional environment. As
long as the cells were allowed to "adjust" through the process
of mitosis to the changed nutritional environment, the
cell line would survive. This occurred despite the fact that
the mother cell did not do well in the stressed environment.
In other words, when experiments exposed a cell to nutritional
changes, the cell's response was to produce two
daughter cells equipped, so to speak, with an adjusted enzymatic
molecular constituency. This could be measured,
for the mother cell line conducted mitosis at a much slower
rate than the daughter cell line. Neither the standard assumptions
of biochemistry nor those of molecular genetics
can explain the causality of such a process. Webb looked
to the conception of what is called the electrohydrodynamic
field in basic physics for an approach to such questions.
Webb began in the early 1950s by studying the relative
stability of some plant viruses under the stresses of dehydration
and radiation, and his experiments proceeded to
investigate the role played by "bound" water molecules in
the structure and function of macromolecules and complexes
of them in the living process. As a by-product of this
work, he hypothesized that biologically bound water should
absorb microwaves.
Webb extensively studied the bioeffects of microwaves
on cells as their age and nutrition varied. His work has
established that the cell responds only to certain frequencies
of waves, and that the particular frequencies change
with its age and nutrition. In other words, the effects are
"expressed" through mitosis.
The frequencies able to change the rate of RNA synthesis
in the living cell differ from those able to effect the synthesis
of protein and DNA. However, the RNA made under irradiation
from a frequency able to alter protein and DNA
synthesis has a small molecular weight, which suggests that
the coding from DNA to protein via messenger RNA is "uncoupled."
Like many crystals, the cell has to be activated to respond
to these waves. In its active state (post mitosis), the cell not
only can receive electromagnetic energy but also can amplify
it. This would play a crucial role when the individual
oscillations of macromolecules are not simply added together
but "shift" to a new coherent ordering frequency as
the macromolecules form complexes.
More recently, Webb has used Raman spectroscopy to
show the internal oscillations of whole cells. Instead of the
very complicated spectrum of lines that would be expected
from the large number of ongoing individual oscillations,
there was no spectrum at all in the resting stage, C 0 . Once
the cell mass was activated, however, by addition of a suitable
nutrient containing a usable oxidizable carbon source,
38 May-June 1988 21st CENTURY