Cell cell death communication by signals passing through non-aqueous environment

Abstract

Investigation of ultraweak photon emission (UPE) in living mater was started in 1920-s by Russian biologist A. Gurwitsch discovered mitogenetic radiation (MGR), ultraviolet light emitted from growing organisms that stimulated similar organisms to grow. MGR attracted enormous interest of the scientific community resulting in many scientific publications confirming occurrence of permanent and spontaneous biophoton emission during natural metabolic processes in diverse living organisms. However, along with studies showing the existence of intercellular electromagnetic communication resulted in various responses of detector cells there have been numerous unsuccessful attempts to confirm the biological significance of MGR. Here we reported strong evidence for non-chemical intercellular signaling leading to biological cellular response. We found the ability of various cell types under conditions of oxidative stress induced by p-benzoquinones to generate death signals, which can affect target cells over long distances through non-aquatic environments resulting in morphological alterations and viability loss. We show that detector cells may distinguish and respond the same way to death signals transmitted from various type of inducer cells and pharmaceuticals may interrupt cellular death responses. These findings provide strong support for the view that non-chemical signals can provide a prompt and synchronic response of cell ensembles to noxious stimuli.