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Radiofrequency and microwave interactions between biomolecular systems

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Abstract

The knowledge of mechanisms underlying interactions between biological systems, be they biomacromolecules or living cells, is crucial for understanding physiology, as well as for possible prevention, diagnostics and therapy of pathological states. Apart from known chemical and direct contact electrical signaling pathways, electromagnetic phenomena were proposed by some authors to mediate non-chemical interactions on both intracellular and intercellular levels. Here, we discuss perspectives in the research of nanoscale electromagnetic interactions between biosystems on radiofrequency and microwave wavelengths. Based on our analysis, the main perspectives are in (i) the micro and nanoscale characterization of both passive and active radiofrequency properties of biomacromolecules and cells, (ii) experimental determination of viscous damping of biomacromolecule structural vibrations and (iii) detailed analysis of energetic circumstances of electromagnetic interactions between oscillating polar biomacromolecules. Current cutting-edge nanotechnology and computational techniques start to enable such studies so we can expect new interesting insights into electromagnetic aspects of molecular biophysics of cell signaling.

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Notes

  1. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

  2. Such combination of dipole moment and electric intensities can be, in reality, achieved only for a limited number of physiological events. This fact is on the one hand limiting for the existence of radiofrequency signaling in biosystems as a generally widespread mechanism, but, on the other hand, it provides specificity necessary for meaningful interactions in cells.

  3. An electrically short antenna has dimensions much shorter than half of the wavelength it emits.

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Acknowledgements

Authors were supported from institutional funding of the Institute of Photonics and Electronics, The Czech Academy of Sciences and by the Czech Science Foundation, grant no. 15-17102S.

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  1. Institute of Photonics and Electronics, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Chaberska 57, 182 00, Prague, Czechia

    Ondřej Kučera & Michal Cifra

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  1. Ondřej Kučera
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  2. Michal Cifra
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Correspondence to Michal Cifra.

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O.K. and M.C. wrote the paper. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Appendix

Appendix

We can obtain a good insight into the limitations of relevance of the biological electromagnetic field by considering the physical limitations of the power on the the cellular level which may be channeled to such a field.

A simple way to estimate an upper boundary of cellular power production is via quantification of the total energy available in the cell considering the amount of common energy source, e.g. glucose, in the cell. Approximate glucose concentration in the cells is about 5 mM, i.e. 5 ⋅ 10 −14 mol/pL. Considering the standard enthalpy of the glucose oxidation of −2800 kJ/mol, the total energy released by complete oxidation of all glucose available in the cell would be 140 nJ/pL of cell volume. If this energy was released within the time T=1 s, the corresponding generated power would be P=E/T=140 nW/pL of the cell volume. Of course, this is an upper power limit (given by physical constraint of energy availability) which is not reachable under physiological conditions. How much power is actually being consumed and produced by the cell under physiological conditions can be easily estimated either from direct calorimetric measurements [54, 55] or indirectly from consumption of oxygen [56] and consequent ATP production (about 2.5 ATP molecules / O 2 consumed). We can find from the data in the given references that a single cell operates with total power in the range of few units to hundreds of fW/pL of cell volume. Cell volumes span from few fL to hundreds of pL, which gives range of total power from 1 aW to 10 pW/cell. Obviously, this is just a time-averaged power.

Provided the energy is accumulated in some manner and released in short bursts, the efficient power within a small time scale may be higher by several orders of magnitude than the time-averaged power. One of the examples of such bursts is neuron firing, where the energy stored in the transmembrane potential and membrane capacitance is released though a burst of current flow. However, this is a very specific mechanism of burst like energy release and is not biologically general. In order to search for such accumulation/release mechanism, one would need to identify the magnitude of energy accumulation time T 1 and magnitude of release duration T 2. The ratio T 1/T 2 quantifies then the enhancement of released power over the average power enumerated earlier. Electromagnetic power is also distributed spectrally and spatially. Broad spectral distribution (such as that of thermal radiation) can be taken as a zero order estimate of spectral distribution of the cellular power, although some hypotheses about accumulation of energy at certain frequencies exist – see for instance the theory of H. Fröhlich [57]. Considering the spatial distribution of total power to be uniform and estimating that 0.1% of total cellular power is channeled to electromagnetic power generation, power densities at the cell surface integrated over the whole frequency spectrum may be of the order of 10 −14 up to 10 −10 W/cm 2 per single cell.

It is hard to estimate how much of the total power of the cell can and is actually used for generation of radiofrequency fields, since there are no confirmed generating mechanisms of cellular radiofrequency fields. In our earlier work [11], we roughly estimated that up to 10% of the total cellular power is supplied to vibrational systems (microtubules) predicted to be involved in generation of the radiofrequency electromagnetic field. We consider these estimates too optimistic based on our current understanding of the issue.

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Kučera, O., Cifra, M. Radiofrequency and microwave interactions between biomolecular systems. J Biol Phys 42, 1–8 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10867-015-9392-1

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