Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Does water represent genetic code?

Stealth Skater sent me an interesting popular article with title Scorn over claim of teleported DNA in the latest New Scientist. The furor is about the article DNA waves and water by L. Montagnier, J. Aissa, E. Del Giudice, C. Lavallee, A. Tedeschi, and G. Vitiello, which has not yet been even published.

Already "DNA waves and water" is enough to induce a deep growl from the throat of a hard-nosed skeptic, and the words "homeopathy" and "water memory" are the signals which transform even civilized skeptic to a raging blood hound. Water memory at gene level is indeed what the article is about. What makes the situation so problematic is that Montagnier is HIV Nobelist so that it is not so easy to dismiss the work as has been done routinely for all work related to water memory since the days of Benveniste and before.

The story began when Benveniste found evidence for water memory. Water solution of biomolecules was diluted so that there was no trace about the molecules. What Benveniste and collaborators claimed was that the treated water is however somehow able to represent the biologically relevant properties of molecules so that its action on some biomolecules can be the same as that of the original molecules. This could obviously explain the claimed effects of homeopathy.

Benveniste got a label of fraudster in a scientific investigation led by the magician James Randi (true, this is what the standards of skeptic science sadly often are!). The work of Benveniste has been however continued behind the scenes and it has been for a long time to possible to reproduce the effects of biologically active molecules by using only the low frequency electromagnetic spectrum of these molecules which suggest that biological signalling relies on low frequency em radiation. Skeptics have simply dismissed all this research.

That genes have electromagnetic representation have been also claimed by Peter Gariaev and his collaborators for long time ago. For TGD inspired explanations for the findings of Gariaev see this and this: the latter link is an article written in collaboration with Peter Gariaev and will be published in the first issue of DNADJ journal during this month.

The claim of Montagnier's team is that the radiation generated by DNA affects water in such a manner that it behaves as if it contained the actual DNA. A brief summary of experiment of Montagnier and collaborators is in order.

  1. Two test tubes containing 100 bases long DNA fragments were studied. Both tubes were subjected to 7 Hz electromagnetic radiation. Earth's magnetic field was eliminated to prevent its possible inteference (the cyclotron frequencies of Earth's magnetic field are in EEG range and one of the family secrets of biology and neuroscience since eventies is that cyclotron frequencies in magnetic fields have biological effects on vertebrate brain). The frequencies around 7 Hz correspond to cyclotron frequencies of some biologically important ions in the endogenous magnetic field of .2 Tesla explaining the findings. This field is 2/5 of the nominal value of the Earth's magnetic field.

  2. What makes the situation so irritating for skeptics who have been laughing for decades for homepathy and water memory is that the repeated dilution process used for the homeopathic remedies was applied to DNA in the recent case. The dilution containing no detectable amounts DNA (dilution factor was 10-12) was placed in second test tube whereas the first test tube contained 100 bases long DNA in the original concentration.

  3. After 16 to 18 hours both tubes were subjected to polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which builds DNA from its basic building bricks using DNA polymerase enzyme. What is so irritating that DNA was generated also in the test tube containing the highly diluted water. Water seems to be able to cheat the polymerase by mimicking the presence of the actual DNA serving in the usual situation as a template for builing copies of DNA. One could also speak about the analog quantum teleportation.

In TGD inspired quantum biology the representations of genes in terms of temporal patterns of em radiation are in central role (see this) . TGD leads to a concrete model for water memory in terms of the magnetic body of biomolecule whose cyclotron frequency pattern codes for the biological effects of the molecule. Water memory means that water can build magnetic bodies mimicking those of biomolecules or perhaps steal them in the process of dilution which involves the shaking of the solution.

TGD suggest also another representation of the genetic code in terms of dark nucleons, which could be highly relevant for the realization of water memory in terms of a dark portion of water for which there exist empirical evidence. This dark portion would also explain the numerous anomalies of water. It became as a total surprise that the states of dark nucleons correspond in natural manner to DNA, RNA, tRNA, and aminoacids. DNA would define only one particular representation of the genetic code, which in the primary form would be realized at elementary particle level and that there could exists many representations of DNA. Also the model for DNA as topological quantum computer proposes a non-standard representation of the code.

The existence of a multitude of representations of the code would not be too surprising when one realizes that the information processing performed by computers involves endless variety of different representations of various codes. The problem is about attitudes: the dogma that biology is nothing but chemistry is what is being challenged and we love dogmas because they liberate us from the burden of using our own brains.

5 comments:

Ulla said...

I have come to the conclusion there are two kinds of oscillations in the living body, quantal and decoherent, as a kind of giant double-slit exp. We intermingle these and so we see no pattern, but it is there.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053
Elisabeth Rieper, Janet Anders, Vlatko Vedral

Vedral has written much about quantum biology. http://arxiv.org/find/quant-ph/1/au:+Vedral_V/0/1/0/all/0/1

what role might entanglement play in DNA. To find out, they've constructed a simplified theoretical model of DNA in which each nucleotide consists of a cloud of electrons around a central positive nucleus. This negative cloud can move relative to the nucleus, creating a dipole. And the movement of the cloud back and forth is a harmonic oscillator.

When the nucleotides bond to form a base, these clouds must oscillate in opposite directions to ensure the stability of the structure.

Rieper and co ask what happens to these oscillations, or phonons as physicists call them, when the base pairs are stacked in a double helix. Phonons are quantum objects, meaning they can exist in a superposition of states and become entangled.

To start with, Rieper and co imagine the helix without any effect from outside heat. "Clearly the chain of coupled harmonic oscillators is entangled at zero temperature," they say (T=0K). They then go on to show that the entanglement can also exist at room temperature.

That's possible because phonons have a wavelength which is similar in size to a DNA helix and this allows standing waves to form, a phenomenon known as phonon trapping. When this happens, the phonons cannot easily escape. A similar kind of phonon trapping is known to cause problems in silicon structures of the same size.

That would be of little significance if it had no overall effect on the helix. But the model developed by Rieper and co suggests that the effect is profound.

Although each nucleotide in a base pair is oscillating in opposite directions, this occurs as a superposition of states, so that the overall movement of the helix is zero. In a purely classical model, however, this cannot happen, in which case the helix would vibrate and shake itself apart.

So in this sense, these quantum effects are responsible for holding DNA together.

http://zone-reflex.blogspot.com/2010/09/quantum-biology-dna.html

Liou Duvinini said...

Interesante...

S-CT said...

Hi Matti,
There is the following title in the blog "Does water represent the genetic code?". Very good question!
I can't "see" it on your blog. (sure, I have cookies disabled)
Could you help me? I would be glad to share my modest ideas, on these questions.
Best regards.
Tidjani Négadi

matpitka@luukku.com said...

Strange. I am not good in these technical things so that I cannot help in invisibility problem.

If you send me your email address, I can send the text in email. My address is matpitka@luukku.com. You can send also some material about your own work (in fact I have the feeling that he have exchanged emails for years ago).


Matti

Négadi said...

Thanks, Matti. I have now the text of your paper "Does water represent the genetic code?".
Yes, we did exchange emails.
Best regards.(Maybe a future convergence
Tidjani

tnegadi@gmail.com