INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE
OF BIOPHYSICS
Conference
on Biophotons 1999
Abstracts of the Conference Reports in
alphabetic Order
This work was supported in part by the grant from the RHSF #99-06-00268A
THE POSSIBLE ROLE PLAYED BY THE BIOPHOTONS IN THE LONG-RANGE
INTERACTION BETWEEN NEUTROPHIL LEUKOCYTES
Xun Shen, Lin Bei, Tian-Hui Hu, Binil Aryal
Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101,
China
The cell-to-cell communication is commonly believed to be mediated by
some special messenger molecules such as hormones, growth factors and neurotransmitters
which are released from one cell and transmitted to another. However, can
the cell-to-cell communication be realized through physical interaction?
In order to test such a possibility, the neutrophil leukocytes from pig
blood were used as a model system to investigate possible communication
between two separate cell populations through optical long-rang (millimeter
range) interaction.
In the experiments, neutrophil suspension was filled in a large quartz
cuvette where a small quartz cuvette was positioned at center. The small
cuvette was filled with either the same cell suspension or HBSS (Hanks
balanced salt solution). The cells in the large cuvette were stimulated
by PMA (phorbol myristate acetate) or zymosan to undergo respiratory burst
with which a chemiluminescence burst was concomitant. The influence of
the cells in the small centrally positioned cuvette on the light emission
from the stimulated cells in the large cuvette, and the influence of the
stimulated cells in the large cuvette on the redox capacity of the cells
in the central cuvette were carefully measured. The results showed that
(1)
In most cases, the light emission from the stimulated cells in the large
cuvette was enhanced by the presence of the cells in the small centrally
positioned cuvette; (2) If the cells in the large cuvette were stimulated
to respiratory burst, more ferricytochrome c, which was present in the
cell suspension filled in the small cuvette, were reduced; (3) Less dihydrorhodamine
123 (DHR), which was previously added in the cell suspension of the small
cuvette and can penetrate cell membrane to enter in cytoplasm, were oxidized.
The result 1 suggests that there may be some long-range interaction
between the cells in the large cuvette and the surrounded cells in the
small cuvette to enhance the photon emission of the PMA- or Zymosan-stimulated
neutrophils in the large cuvette. One may speculate that a positive feedback
in biophoton emission might exist between the two cell populations. The
results 2 and 3 suggest that the biophoton emitted from the stimulated
cells in the large cuvette may stimulate the surrounded cells in the small
cuvette to undergo weak respiratory burst which resulted in increased generation
of superoxide radicals (O2) outside cells and increased generation
of nitric oxide (NO) inside cells. As the consequence, more ferricytochrome
c presented outside cells would be reduced by superoxide radicals, and
more NO induces a relative slow oxidation of DHR due to the formation of
nitrogen dioxide. The results imply that the biophoton may play an important
role in the long-range interaction between neutrophil leukocytes.
© International
Institute of Biophysics 2001 E-mail: iib@lifescientists.de
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