Fwd: Assessing Food Quality by Its After-Glow

[Guest guest]

5 Jan 2004 18:06:30 -0000

 

Assessing Food Quality by Its After-Glow

press-release

 

The Institute of Science in Society

Science Society Sustainability

http://www.i-sis.org.uk

 

General Enquiries sam

Website/Mailing List press-release

ISIS Director m.w.ho

===================================================

 

 

ISIS Press Release 05/01/04

Assessing Food Quality by Its After-Glow

********************************

Measuring the weak light re-emitted by cells and organisms may tell us a lot

about them. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho (m.w.ho) reports

 

The extensive sources and diagram for this article is posted on ISIS Members’

website http://www.i-sis.org.uk/full/AFQFIAFull.php. Details here

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/membership.php.

 

I first became aware of some unusual research at a conference organised by Clive

Kilmister, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, King’s College, London, in 1985,

on " Disequilibrium and Self-organisation " . There, I met, among others, German

physicist Fritz Popp, whose talk meant almost nothing to me then, except for the

claim that organisms are " coherent " , and that the proof of coherence was in the

characteristics of the extremely weak after-glow that organisms emit immediately

after briefly stimulated with light.

That meeting changed my whole field of research, thanks to collaborative work

with Fritz Popp, who taught me a lot about quantum physics, and later, with

Franco Musumeci’s team in Catania University, Sicily, which continues my

incredible voyage of discovery.

 

Coherent " biophotons "

*****************

I later learned that most materials glow in the dark after they have been

exposed to light, but the after-glow emitted by all living cells and organisms

is different. It is also different from the much more intense fluorescence

exhibited by certain chemical compounds, or the strong flashes of light emitted

by fireflies due to special biochemical reactions that generate light.

Living cells and organisms also emit extremely low levels of light

spontaneously, as Alexander Gurvich discovered in Russia in 1923. He thought

this light was involved in intercommunication between cells.

Fifty years later, Fritz-Albert Popp built the first photon detector sensitive

enough to study these " biophotons " , as he calls them. Popp, too, believes cells

and organisms use biophotons to intercommunicate. Moreover, he thinks that both

the spontaneously emitted biophotons as well as the after-glow stimulated by

external light are coherent, and come from a coherent " light-field " in the cells

and organisms. In other words, biophotons represent an extremely weak as well as

a most unusual laser light emitted by the living system; a laser that covers a

broad range of frequencies, from the ultra-violet to the infrared, and probably

beyond, into the microwave and radio-frequency range.

Although many laboratories have been able to detect biophotons, the coherence of

biophotons is much disputed. Many scientists believe they are no more than the

result of " imperfections " or " mistakes " in the biochemical reactions taking

place in the body. But decades of empirical research by Popp and others have

shown without doubt that all cells and organisms emit biophotons, the

characteristics of which are intimately dependent on their physiological state.

There is also a lot of other evidence indicating that organisms are highly

coherent, if not quantum coherent (see The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of

Organisms – thereafter abbreviated to " The Rainbow Worm " - now available from

ISIS’ online store http://www.i-sis.org.uk/rnbwwrm.php).

 

Biophotons and food quality

*********************

Some of the most revealing findings on biophotons were made in connection with

food and other agricultural products. Popp’s laboratory pioneered food quality

research with support coming from some of the biggest food companies. He and his

coworkers found it possible to distinguish organic tomatoes from conventionally

grown tomatoes from a supermarket. Similarly, free-range eggs could be

distinguished from battery-hen eggs, and the germination rate of barley seeds

could be predicted from their after-glow.

Popp’s work has inspired many other laboratories around the world. Some have

devoted major efforts to assessing food quality. It is not hard to understand

why a simple, non-destructive method such as biophoton emission is needed.

For example, cherry tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum var. cerasiforme) are

harvested at various stages to ripen on storage. The storage-ripened tomatoes

looked the same in colour, size and degree of firmness, but human tasters are

able to distinguish those picked earlier as less sweet and less tasty, and

having more " off-flavour " than those picked later. And this could be confirmed

by chemical methods to assess sugar and solid contents. The drawback is that the

chemical tests destroy the tomatoes and many of them are costly and

time-consuming to carry out.

By measuring the after-glow, the research team led by Franco Musumeci in Catania

University was able to distinguish the earlier picked tomatoes without any

difficulty.

The after-glow or " delayed luminescence " (DL) is measured within a hundred

milliseconds (or earlier) after the brief pulse of stimulating light is off. DL

typically starts at a high level, and decays ‘hyperbolically’ (as a function of

time) back to the background in seconds, or sometimes minutes.

Musumeci and his colleagues found, first of all, that the intensity of the

after-glow decreased as the tomatoes matured, and was closely correlated with

the decrease in the rate of respiration as well as the increase in the redness

of the tomatoes. In other words, the greener, and less mature the tomatoes, the

higher the DL. The DL of all samples dropped during the storage period.

By the end of the storage period of ten days, all the tomatoes were the same

indistinguishable shade of red. But striking differences remained in the

intensity DL, which decreased with the maturity of the fruit at harvesting and

the increase in sugar content (or " Solids " , see Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Delayed luminescence and colour as a function of solids in cherry

tomatoes.

 

Biophotons and seed quality

*********************

Seed quality is as important as food quality, if not more so, as the

profitability of agriculture depends on it. The farmer wants a seed lot that

give a high rate of germination quickly and the resulting seedlings to develop

into vigorous plants. Stress can affect seed viability and vigour during all

stages of production, harvesting drying, storage, packaging and transport.

In a study carried out in 1994, Musumeci’s group had established that soybean

seeds heat stressed for varying periods of time had decreased growth rates

proportional to the length of heat stress, while the intensity of DL increased

proportionately. There were also significant disturbances to the decay times of

the DL, tending to shorten it.

Research carried out by others have shown that seeds improve and recover vigour

after ‘priming’, or being soaked in osmotically active agents such as

polyethylene glycol (PEG). Many molecular and physiological processes are

correlated with the loss of seed vigour, among which, the accumulation of gene

and chromosome mutations, loss of integrity of ribosomal RNA, decrease in

membrane phospholipid content and increase in fatty acids.

The improvement in vigour following priming was correlated with completion of

DNA repair during priming and a more favourable metabolic balance of the primed

seeds at the start of germination in water.

Studies on capsicum pepper seeds carried out by the Plant Breeding and Seed

Production group in the University of Torino, Italy, showed that cells of the

embryo in the dried seeds arrest the cell cycle at the ‘G1 phase’, before DNA is

synthesized in the nucleus. Priming in PEG solutions induced DNA synthesis in

the embryo root tips. Within each seed lot, a significant direct correlation was

seen between the frequency of priming-induced nuclear replication and the

improvement in seed vigour, as measured by the reduction in the mean time to

germination. But, the amount of priming-induced nuclear replication was also

correlated with the degree of seed deterioration, so nuclear replication by

itself may not be a reliable guide of improvement or seed vigour.

Musumeci’s group teamed up with researchers in Torino to investigate whether

delayed luminescence could (literally) throw further light on the issue.

They found that keeping the seeds at 45C for 4 and 6 days led to a progressive

increase in intensity of DL compared with controls, which was significant after

6 days. No significant changes in germination rate was observed, while the mean

germination time increased from 5 days in controls to 7.8 days after 6 days at

45C.

Priming control seeds for 6 and 12 days had no significant effect on the

germination rate, but significantly shortened the mean germination time to 3.5

and 2.9 days respectively. The percent of nuclei entering G2 phase (making DNA)

increased from 0 to 8.5% and 20% respectively. This was accompanied by

significant decreases in the intensity of DL.

The seeds kept at 45C for 4 days responded to priming for 6 days by a

significant shortening of the mean germination time from 5.5 days to 3.3 days.

No nuclei had entered the G2 phase, but the DL had decreased significantly,

indicating that the improvements in priming were independent of DNA synthesis.

After priming for 12 days, germination rate

decreased from 92% in the unprimed seeds to 83%, 13.6% of the nuclei entered G2

phase and there was a further reduction in the DL.

Seeds kept at 45C for 6 days and primed for 6 days showed a slight shortening of

mean germination time and a small reduction in the intensity of DL, again

without any nuclei entering G2 phase. After priming for 12 days, the mean

germination time had shortened from 7.8 days to 3.4 days, the germination rate

had also gone down from 92 to 85.5%, 10.1% of the nuclei had entered G2 phase

and DL had decreased sharply.

Further analysis of the data showed that the intensity of DL was highly

correlated with mean germination time, that is, the longer the mean germination

time, the higher the DL.

So DL appears to be a better predictor of some aspects of seed vigour than

nuclear replication.

 

What does it all mean?

*****************

The orthodox scientific community has difficulty understanding these results.

They are used to the idea that light is emitted by specific light-emitting

molecules (or chromophores). But that is immediately contradicted by the fact

that biophotons consist of light of a wide, continuous range of frequencies,

rather than a single or a few frequencies as would be the case if special

light-emitting molecules were involved.

All the findings indicate that biophotons come from the entire cell or organism,

which is behaving rather like a special ‘solid state’ device with energy stored

throughout the system, as I have suggested in The Rainbow Worm.

The external light goes to excite the system as a whole. The excited energy is

distributed throughout the system and eventually part of it is re-emitted as

light over a wide band of frequencies, reflecting the complex excitation state

of the whole.

Of course, the analogy with a solid-state device - which originated with

solid-state physicist Herbert Fröhlich - is very crude, like the analogy of

biophotons with laser light. First of all, the organism, and even the single

cell, has a complex, nested organisation that’s unrivalled in any artificial

solid-state device. Cells have their own skeleton, compartments, and tiny organs

studded with molecular machines turning autonomously, transforming energy. More

importantly, organisms are definitely not solids but liquid crystalline,

consisting of 70% by weight of water, which is increasingly recognized by

scientists in the mainstream as the most important constituent of living

systems. (An entire Royal Society discussion meeting was recently devoted to the

question: is life possible without water?) The large amounts of water associated

with living organisms offer the flexibility that practically all proteins, DNA,

RNA and other macromolecules need in order to work at all, or to work to

the high efficiency required in the organisms.

Nevertheless, the analogy is useful, as solid-state systems do exhibit DL

similar (though not exactly the same) to that emitted by organisms and cells.

Musumeci’s group discovered that the intensity of DL is a function of the size

of the grains, and therefore, of the domains in which the fine-order physical

structure can sustain a band of excited electronic levels that gives rise to DL.

When the grains are reduced to powder, DL disappeared. The standard explanation

for DL in solid-state systems is that the excited electrons move from their

fixed orbits around the nucleus of the atoms, and eventually fall back to the

‘ground state’. In the process, some of the energy of excitation is re-emitted

as delayed luminescence, while the rest is dissipated as heat.

In collaboration with Musumeci’s team, we have shown that DL disappears, or is

reduced to a very low level when the organisation of the cell is disrupted by

homogenisation, or by immersing in an ionic medium that irreversibly fragments

the cytoskeleton (skeleton of the cell made of special fibre-forming proteins).

Similarly, using slices of the isolated beef Achilles tendon, we were able to

show that DL is closely dependent on the structure of the collagen fibrils and

the associated biological water. As the water content decreases, drastic changes

take place both in the intensity of the DL and in its rate of decay (slope of

the hyperbolic decay curve).

After-glow and the coherence of organisms

In the cell, as in the solid-state system, excitation energy can make electrons

or even protons (positively charged hydrogen nucleus) move through the system,

and there are many other ways in which the excitation energy can be stored

transiently, before it is dissipated, as heat or light: vibrations of chemical

bonds, large fluctuations of protein and other macromolecules and electrical

currents through the cells and organisms, to mention but a few. Intuitively, one

can see that the more the cell or organism has the capacity to store the energy,

the less will be re-emitted, and also the more long-lasting is the DL (the slope

of the hyperbolic decay curve is less steep). That may be why there is an

inverse relationship between the vigour of seeds and intensity of DL. But that

is no more than a hypothesis at the moment.

It is clear that a lot more research on non-destructive physical methods is

needed. An imaging technique, Symchromics©, invented in my laboratory allows us

to see all living organisms in brilliant colours, and offers the possibility of

measuring the coherence of the organism and cells directly.

The colours depend on the motions of the molecules in tissues and cells being

highly coherent. Because light vibrates much faster than the coherent motion of

the molecules, living organisms look as if they are made of statically aligned

liquid crystals, thereby generating the same kind of ‘interference colours’ that

are produced by rock crystals.

Indeed, the intensity of the colours is directly dependent on the coherence of

the molecular motions. Significantly, the most active parts of the organism are

invariably the brightest parts; which suggests that coherence is a function of

the energetic status or vitality of the organism. The colours fade and disappear

as the organism dies, which is when random molecular motions take over.

What does coherence amount to in the organism in terms of energy storage and

mobilisation? It amounts to energy being mobilised and distributed throughout

the system most rapidly and efficiently, the energy effectively remaining stored

as it is mobilised (see " Why are organisms so complex? " this issue). When such a

system is perturbed with an external light pulse, its degree of coherence is

bound to affect how the energy in the light pulse excites the system, and how

that energy is re-emitted as after-glow.

It would be simple and revealing to correlate DL measurements with measurements

on coherence using Symchromics©. We fully intend to do that when we can get the

funding required.

 

 

===================================================

This article can be found on the I-SIS website at

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/AFQFIA.php

If you would prefer to receive future mailings as HTML please let us know.

If you would like to be removed from our mailing list - please reply

to press-release with the word in the subject field

===================================================

CONTACT DETAILS

The Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 OXR

telephone: [44 20 8643 0681] [44 20 7383 3376] [44 20 7272 5636]

 

General Enquiries sam

Website/Mailing List press-release

ISIS Director m.w.ho

 

MATERIAL IN THIS EMAIL MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT PERMISSION, ON

CONDITION THAT IT IS ACCREDITED ACCORDINGLY AND CONTAINS A LINK TO

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/

 

 

 

 

Find out what made the Top Searches of 2003