Fröhlich's Coherent Excitations & The Cancer Problem—A Retrospecive Overview of His Guiding Philosophy

Abstract

The guiding philosophy underlying Fröhlich's approach to biology from the side of theoretical physics is summarized, and illustrated, in the context of his prediction of (dynamic) coherent excitations in living systems, based on their dielectric and elastic properties, and far-from-equilibrium (nonlinear) character. His envisaged role of these coherent excitations in cell division and its control is outlined, together with the associated implications for cancer—as understood both at the time of his work and subsequently.

Keywords:

• Fröhlich
• Biological coherence
• Cell division control
• Cancer

Notes

²To facilitate this, advantage is taken of the benefit of hindsight to integrate the themes developed in his many publications over 20 years into a coherent presentation of his philosophy and approach. Incidental references will be found in the footnotes, while those in the main body of the text are to papers in which key developments were first published.

³He repeatedly stressed (e.g., Fröhlich, 1986, p. 243) that experimental verification of a biophysical prediction need not necessarily be considered as proof of the particular theoretical model used to make the prediction; other models may well lead to the same prediction. Such a multi-causal situation (which arises in consequence of the far-from-equilibrium, nonlinear character of living systems) necessitates very close collaboration between theory and experiment—much closer than is usual in physics. Indeed, assuming experiment confirms a particular prediction, it is possible, in the present case, to ask a question that is strictly forbidden in physics (except when dealing with machines), namely: What is the biological purpose of the predicted property?

⁴Fröhlich, 1986, p. 243.

⁵Fröhlich, 1980, p. 87.

⁶Fröhlich, 1980, p. 88.

⁷Just how large a system must be for collective behavior to be possible is governed by the magnitude of the fluctuations in the relevant macroscopic quantities (Fröhlich, 1970a).

⁸Fröhlich, 1970a, 1981.

⁹Fröhlich, 1970a.

¹⁰Fröhlich, 1980, p. 87.

¹¹Fröhlich, 1988, p. 1; see also Hyland, 1987.

¹²This field derives from the fact that because of metabolic pumping of Na and K ions the inner and outer surfaces of the cell membrane become oppositely charged electrically.

¹³By taking into account the shape dependence of the electric polarization (free) energy, he showed, through elaborations of some qualitative considerations dating from 1967 (Fröhlich, 1969), that the induced dipole moments can get (meta) stabilized as a (coherent) quasi-ferroelectric state (Fröhlich, 1973); for an earlier application of this to understanding enzyme action, see Fröhlich, 1970b.

¹⁴Not only those in the cell membrane and the other biological components considered originally (Fröhlich, 1968), but also in the subsequently discovered microtubules of the cytoskeleton (Fröhlich, 1986, p. 251).

¹⁵There is an evident parallel here with the case of the laser, which lases only above a certain threshold of optical pumping.

¹⁶For example, a mode of uniform polarization has infinite wavelength, or, equivalently, zero wave-vector.

¹⁷This depends on another kind of non-linear interaction involving a coupling between the polarization field and the elastic modes of the system (Fröhlich, 1973).

¹⁸The possibility of Bose-like condensation here arises from the competition between the dissipation inherent in the system and the metabolic pumping, which effectively fixes the total number of polarization quanta; this permits a non-zero chemical potential to be (formally) defined, and the attendant possibility of Bose-Einstein condensation, as in a gas of a fixed number of material particles.

¹⁹Ho and Saunders, 1994; Kashulin and Roldugin, 1999.

²⁰Fröhlich, 1986, p. 251.

²¹Prior to mitosis, there is also an increase in biophoton emission in the visible range (Popp et al., 1981).

²²Other experiments utilising synchronised bacterial cells have detected shifts in the laser-Raman spectra of metabolically active B. Megaterium & E. Coli, corresponding to resonances between 7 × 10¹⁰ and 5 × 10¹²Hz, which appear, however, only at certain stages of evolution (Webb and Stoneham, 1977). In addition, an anti-Stokes/Stokes ratio close to unity (instead of the thermal value of about 0.5 at physiological temperature) has been measured in E. coli, consistent with a strongly supra-thermally excited mode in the system (Webb et al., 1977). Details of these experiments (and others) can be found in Fröhlich's review article of 1980 (Fröhlich, 1980).

²³It should be noted that the failure of other attempts (e.g., Furia et al., 1986; Gos et al., 1997) to reproduce the effects found in yeast are most likely due to crucial differences in experimental protocol—such as irradiating at different stages in the cell cycle, differences in the way in which growth rate is measured, differences in cell density, differences in synchronization methods, etc.—which effectively undermine the fidelity of the purported replications.

²⁴The possibility (and indeed the necessity) of establishing “purpose” distinguishes biology from physics, where such enquiries are permissible only when dealing with machines (Fröhlich, 1983, p. 1; 1986, p. 243).

²⁵Fröhlich, 1988, p. 21.

²⁶The global coherent vibration can be excited only once the organ has reached a size such that the number of contributing cells is large enough to permit the necessary collective polarization mode to be defined—see Footnote 7. Below this size, cells can divide freely, the electro-strictive stress at the cell surface mentioned above acting as a stimulus. Once the cells are locked into the global coherent excitation, however, this stimulus ceases, since the deformations of individual become sublimated into an overall deformation of the whole organ; this affords an alternative basis (to that given above) for the so-called “contact inhibition” exhibited by cells in normal tissue.

²⁷The frequency of the global coherent excitation must be expected to differ somewhat (because of the nonlinear electro-strictive coupling referred to above) from that of an individual cell in isolation.

²⁸Since (unlike the case of a cell) the size of an organ can be much larger than typical electromagnetic wavelengths, it is possible that the global coherent excitation is here predominantly longitudinal.

²⁹After division, once the DNA complex has recoiled, the frequency will revert to the value corresponding to a cell in isolation, which, in general, differs from that of the global coherent mode; see Footnote 27.

³⁰This depends on the amount of nutrient available, which is not unlimited, particularly in the case of glucose-addictive malignant cells.

³¹Good reviews, containing more technical aspects than considered here, can be found in Fröhlich, 1980, 1986, 1988, and Hyland, 2002.

³²For example, the ability of ultra-weak external microwave radiation of a specific frequency to “switch on” a particular bio-effect becomes understandable if the radiation supplies the deficit between the rate of energy supply available from metabolism and the threshold value required for the establishment of an associated coherent excitation (Fröhlich, 1980).

³³This is based on electrochemical limit cycles arising from a synthesis of the dynamic coherent excitation discussed above and the (static) one constituted by the quasi-ferroelectric state mentioned in Footnote 13 (Fröhlich, 1977b; see also Hyland, 2002).

³⁴See, for example: Globus et al., 2004.