Cells use 'bioelectricity' to coordinate and make group decisions
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
https://youtu.be/c8iFtaltX-s?t=4751
Start at 1:19:11, the stuff before is him talking about biology, but from an intelligence perspective. After this time stamp is his retrospective on his bioelectricity research over the years, showing also examples of how they got a frog embryo to produce eyes, and many more things.
The cells in your eyes have exactly the same DNA as the cells in your big toe, so developmental morphology cannot be explained with DNA alone.
That’s the whole point of developmental biology, to show how features of the human body form and develop based on gene expression, the timing of which during embryonic and fetal development itself is dictated by your genes.
If not your genes, what else would determine why you have eyes in about the same place in your head as every other human?
> The cells in your eyes have exactly the same DNA as the cells in your big toe, so developmental morphology cannot be explained with DNA alone.
Sure it can, because while every cell has essentially the same DNA, the expression of genes differs between cells, which is what causes cells to differentiate. And this differentiation also controls development; look up the Hox genes as an example.
Morphology is determined by the combination of genes, chemical signals, original cell machinery, and apparently electrical signals. But we never believed that genes determined morphology alone, eg, we know that chemical signals can cause anomalies.
For the consistent parts - eyes may be different colors but are overwhelmingly consistent - what else could be the ultimate cause but DNA? For example, if those chemical signals, cell machinary, and electrical signals produce the same results billions of times over 200,000 years, then they must function the same overall. How does that happen if the chemical signals, cell machinary, and electrical signals aren't determined, even if indirectly, by DNA?
Your eyes would be misplaced if the process from cell clump to mat to tubule failed due to chemical signaling failure, but the whole embryo tends to be spontaneously aborted when gestation fails so catastrophically.
And despite genitalia being roughly one of two forms and similarly positioned, chemical signals can disrupt their formation.
> How does that happen if the chemical signals, cell machinary, and electrical signals aren't determined, even if indirectly, by DNA?
They don’t produce the same results with perfect accuracy — 75% of pregnancies are spontaneously aborted, at least in part due to developmental failures.
But the problem with this argument is simple: you have a human cell everywhere you have human DNA, so those correlations with DNA are also correlations with cellular machinery and with particular chemical signals from the mother. There was no point in those 200,000 years where DNA operated independently of those other mechanisms — we can only say the system as a whole reliably creates those features.
Somehow the machinary is passed down: Do we know of another mechanism besides DNA that is self-perpetuating? Is there any living creature without it? Prokaryotes (bacteria) even have DNA.
Or is there a way to do it without self-perpetuating mechanisms? Is that logically possible? Some machinary might be perpetuated by other machinary, e.g. the chemical might recreate the electrical, meaning it's not self-perpetuating. But that's not different than DNA: DNA itself isn't the machinary, but its self-perpetuation is what recreates other parts.
I suppose some parts of the environment are consistent, such as sunlight, air, water, and heat, but the environmental stimuli must trigger something that is already there.
If I have a stool with three legs, and remove one leg causing it to fall, can I conclude that removed leg is what made it stand?
You’re making the same mistake as before in reverse: DNA would do nothing without a host cell or chemical signals, either.
> Somehow the machinary is passed down: Do we know of another mechanism besides DNA that is self-perpetuating?
The system as a whole is self-perpetuating, but DNA is not self-perpetuating: without a host cell and without ambient chemical signals, it cannot propagate. That’s in contrast to ribozymes which can be self-catalyzing RNA, ie, truly self-propagating chemicals.
In the RNA world hypothesis, such self-catalyzation was the origin of life; and by the time DNA evolved, it did so within a running biological system and as merely one component of cellular replication.
As a whole the system of chemical signals, DNA, and cellular machinery propagates; but just like our stool example, removing any of the factors causes that to fail.
No system is self-perpetuating, per the Second Law; all need other inputs. What makes the machinary yield the ~same results ~every time is DNA.
> In the RNA world hypothesis, such self-catalyzation was the origin of life; and by the time DNA evolved, it did so within a running biological system and as merely one component of cellular replication.
Is there evidence of that? Afaik the earliest evidence is prokaryotes ~~3.5 billion years ago, and prokaryotes generally have DNA.
He once compared tinkering with DNA as pulling out a soldering iron to fix a software bug.
In the case of morphology, DNA may not be the best level of abstraction. It's certainly possible, just as one can use chemistry for social problems, but for some problems, affecting cell-to-cell communication may be a more direct path.
Theoretically, it could be second or much higher order effects that result from genes. It could be a combination of complex factors - the environment in the womb, nutrition, behavior by the mother, etc. - that eventually trace back to DNA.
Also, is it literally true that DNA is the only thing that's consistent (in these respects) between all generations of Homo sapiens?
Is that true?
I know that cells in the brain have significant variability in DNA, but not really aware of what non-neuronal and non-brain cells in general typically have.
Also, I've been trying to find people to discuss this, so I set up a discord server:
if anyone is interest (note: i'm just a software engineer, not in biomedicine or bioelectricity yet). if there are already long running discord servers then i'd rather join these instead :)
>In this way, bioelectrical flow across cell membranes lets tissues test which cells are the least healthy and mark them for extrusion. “They’re always pushing against each other and bullying each other. And what they’re doing is probing each other for which one’s the weakest link,” Rosenblatt said. “It’s a community effect.”
This fits with my model of how high levels of cooperation succeed in biology. Even in a community as homogeneous as cells you have the risk of defectors (cancer), or just poor members. As such you need a process to continually test your community members.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/LC/D2LC0...
It enabled healing of diabetic wounds that are otherwise hard to heal.
As cells in epithelial tissue get crowded, their membranes start to allow more sodium ions to enter, which makes the cell more electrically positive (depolarization). The cells try to counter this, but cells with insufficient stored energy (ATP) will struggle to do so, and will lose water through their membranes, causing them to shrink, which causes them to signal their neighbors to extrude them.
So there's no "group decisions" being made, no "coordination" between cells using "bioelectricity". Yes, all cells rely on electrical potentials across their membranes for normal functioning, potentials that they have to maintain. That's all the involvement of electricity here.
And the only "decision-making" happening here is within a single cell, but of course cells don't "make decisions', cells are little machines, and part of the mechanism for epithelial cells -- a mechanism that works in part using chemistry and electricity -- includes the cell signaling that it needs to be extruded in certain circumstances, like shrinkage.
and what if there is indirection, IE light triggers some sensor molecule that then triggers the flagellum motor.
I guess it all comes down to your definition of decision. The most amazing is mitosis, it sure looks like a massive amount of coordination is required.
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life...
I think many people who don’t have EMF sensitivity find EMFs something easy to say is the cause their health issues, but they approach how to figure it out if it is true with zero scientific thought.
No, I never made that assumption, and didn’t imply anything like that in my post.
No, I’m not running around with a tinfoil hat on thinking that it’s going to kill me, but it does cause me, insomnia, nightmares, and a worsening of my mood disorder.
The problem is since voltage gated ion channels are also associated with mood disorders[1] and are, I believe, how EMF’s effect certain people, then it’s easy to play our sensitivity off as just our mood disorder.
The "decition" is made by the spinal cord. It's not surprising if you imagine that the brain is an oversized part of the spinal cord.
If I can make a bad approximation:
* Making circuits with normal cells is like making circuits with resistors and capacitors.
* Making circuits with neurons is like adding transistors to the mix.
(Please don't take this analogy too seriously, probably biologist and electricians are writing angry replies now.)
Electrically Excitable Cells
At least thats ITU regulated frequency bands. I wonder if the ITU regulates biogenic DC signalling frequencies?
For example, charge carriers are electrons in metal wires vs. ions in biological systems. That has huge implications, because moving around ions is a lot harder, and slower.
In a metal wire the electrical field is established from beginning to the end, and that means that the electrons at the end start moving at pretty much the same time as the ones at the other end, no matter how long the wire. That means in a metal wire signals move at a significant fraction of the speed of light in a vacuum, because it is the speed of the electrical field and not that of the charge carriers that matters.
In a biological system electrical fields are tiny! The way the signal propagates in an axon is much more cumbersome, expensive, and slow. Speed of signal propagation is ca. 1/2 to at most 100 m/s (for thick myelinated axons). The signal is propagated by jumping in very tiny steps along the axon's inner surface. (https://youtu.be/tOTYO5WrXFU)
This also makes The Matrix movies' main premise about humans as batteries a little strange: Sure, there's lots of electrical activity, but it is in trillions of very tiny places across nanometer distances. And it is created by moving ions around (at great energy cost).
So anyway, what actually physically happens in an electrical grid of metal wires, or in a biological system are vastly different things. It is not the same "electricity", the only thing they have in common is that electrical fields and charge carriers (but different ones) are involved. But the way it is structured, created, propagated is entirely different in both cases.
When I asked Google out of curiosity what it had to say it showed this:
> Despite their differences, both are fundamentally, at their core, the movement of charged particles driven by electrical potential differences.
This is just not correct! The "the movement of charged particles" part specifically. Again, wires have one electrical field, but in biological systems propagation is entirely different, and slow, and expensive! The methods used to propagate a signal are not even remotely comparable. That's a difference not even a Radio Yerevan joke could make use of.
It's more that every cell has to maintain a voltage difference between the inside and outside ("membrane potential"). A healthy cell does that constantly using "ion pumps" that use chemical energy (ATP) to increase the potential.
If that potential falls below a certain threshold, certain molecular mechanisms (voltage-sensitive ion channels) inside the cell are triggered that lead to ejection.
Interestingly, are also other mechanisms (pressure-sensitive ion channels) that will "intentionally" make it harder for a cell to maintain its potential if it's already weakened or if the surrounding region is very crowded.
As such, I think the effect of current would depend on the way how it would change the voltage differences of the individual cells.
Auras and chakras don't sound so silly now do they.
"It'll blow those Astronomers' minds when they start researching Astrology and the powerful effect of being born under auspicious constellations!"
__________
If the ancient guru knowledge is so great, what testable predictions does it offer, where "auras" are a causal mechanism?
In other words, not: "Thou must intake the golden aura of oats and fiber by eating some, to counter the dark brown blockage of your Pu-point." The folk remedy might well solve your constipation, but it wouldn't be evidence for the mythology around it.
Like it's pretty well accepted that breathing exercises have physiological and mental health benefits but it took decades of consumerist appropriation of yoga and other techniques before academia properly found the motivation to earnestly investigate that yes breathing exercises are indeed good for you.
As someone who is a deep practitioner of martial arts and athletics, if the metaphors of qi gong and yoga were purely powerful visualisation aids that already provides more than enough tangible benefit. I don't need scientists to tell me that qi is good for my body - I can feel it.
So let's keep an open mind, our ancestors were anything but idiots.
Just not so open our brains fall out.
Our ancestors were just like us, but fewer in number and inventing things from scratch. Miasma, spontaneous generation, Newtonian gravity, these were not people being idiots, and even though they have been shown to be wrong they are still close enough to still be useful today. Phlogiston also wasn't idiotic, but lacks utility vs being correct about oxygen.
One of the shared ways we failed then and now is that what sounds true isn't the same as what is true; the modern easy example of this is how easily many of us get fooled by LLMs, and I suspect that's how a lot of ancient religions grew, with additions and copy-errors evolving them to be maximally plausible-sounding to a human mind.
Parent-poster was the one who made a supercilious prediction that "qi gong will blow those scientists' minds."
Sarcastically reflecting that kind of thing back at the originator is entirely reasonable.
There is already western research on kundalini, the most potent example of bioelectrical energy, and changes in energy potential experienced by meditators. Not to mention countless empirical self-reports (upon which a good scientist would keep an open mind).
But don't let facts get in the way of your prejudices.
What does it actually predict? What measureable predictions can be tested?
I know a lot of people here like to believe Western science knows everything, but fortunately there's still a lot left to discover.
> predictive method
No
> corresponding fields
What field? Corresponding to what?
> changes in energy potential experienced by meditators
Link to mentioned research?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31249516/
Welcome.
It may turn out that you can consciously influence bioelectricity on certain levels (I mean you can certainly control motor functions, maybe you can modulate the current of injury [1] by thinking about a body part?). But you need to be clear about the level of abstraction: when you feel a pit in your stomach are you going to literally attribute this to "clogged energy in your lower dantian", at the chemical level of increased norepinephrine and reduced blood flow to your stomach, or simply as a result of your emotions and anxieties at the moment?
A less fanciful way to say "experience deeper aspects of oneself, one part of which is a greater sensitivity to energy movements and corresponding fields" might simply be "greater sensitivity to emotion and bodily awareness". People do the same thing with therapy, discovering emotional/mental baggage they'd been carrying for a long time, and parts of the body they had been unconsciously tensing.
When everything in our body is meditated by impulses and electricity, saying that you're "becoming more attuned to energy" can be technically true but a functionally useless abstraction. You can equally say "more attuned to chemical fluctuations in your brain/body" or "more attuned to homeostasis disruptions". Maybe in the past they didn't have the vocabulary to distinguish these levels of abstraction, but today we do. (And Michael Levin's work is showing that we've actually been underpaying attention to the bioelectric). This is the same way that the "theory of humors" sort of makes sense on a metaphorical level but it falls apart in a literal sense.
Yes, agreed. There has been plenty of einstein-smart humans making observations for the ~30000 years of human prehistory, with and without the scientific method. Even with a low hit ratio, there is bound to be plenty of correct intuitions. A large number of post-renaissance scientific discoveries are about expressing these in the right testable framework and language.
Unfortunately, people do not bother to make the effort to study these (first hand sources, historical documents like travelogues, even scripture) and rely on either making up or repeating random shit.
Also the free lessons on aypsite.org
They were just a few centuries too early!
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/nuclear-fusion...
If they’d’ve started with turning hydrogen in to gold they’d’ve had more success, and we’d be a space fairing species by now.
If this actually works, I'm going to be convinced that some alchemist overheard an alien dude talking about this but misinterpreted it in line with contemporary knowledge.
Here's a paper, but given the date I have no idea if it was written by humans or by AI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13461
And I guess irradiated gold or a weird gold isotope would be just fine for putting in electronics that is meant to go beyond low earth orbit.
We already know what haemoglobin is thanks
To me the most interesting part of Levin’s research is that they can convince cells to grow two arms, two tails, etc. and when they cut off the two tails, it grows back with two tails. This is without any genetic changes, so where is the information being stored?
Likewise there’s research that butterflies can be taught to have aversions to certain chemicals or smells in the caterpillar state, and they continue to have those aversions in the butterfly state even though they’re entire body becomes a chemical soup during the chrysalis stage. Where is that behavioral information being stored if not neurons?
I think this is pointing to a discover that’s much more profound than the body using electricity in interesting ways. I think it’s pointing to a new force or new aspect of electromagnetism that hasn’t been discovered yet.