Understanding Digital Biology

UNDERSTANDING DIGITAL BIOLOGY

Explaining digital biology is impossible without explaining its principle. The purpose of this text is not to report experimental results. Rather, it tries to explain to laymen, in the simplest terms, this radically new approach to biology. We hope it will be useful to all, scientists or not, who find it hard to "make the leap". Indeed, is it possible to believe that the specific activity of biologically-active molecules (e.g. histamine, caffeine, nicotine, adrenalin), not to mention the immunological signature of a virus or bacterium can be recorded and digitized using a computer sound card, just like an ordinary sound? Imagine the perplexity of Archimedes confronted with a telephone, and being told that by using it he could be heard on the other side of the world, were we not to explain the nature of sound waves or their translation into electromagnetism.

Life depends on signals exchanged among molecules. For example, when you get angry, adrenalin "tells" its receptor, and it alone (as a faithful molecule, it talks to no other) to make your heart beat faster, to contract superficial blood vessels, etc.. In biology, the words "molecular signal" are used very often. Yet, if you ask even the most eminent biologists what the physical nature of this signal is, they seem not even to understand the question, and stare at you wide-eyed. In fact, they've cooked up a rigorously Cartesian physics all their own, as far removed as possible from the realities of contemporary physics, according to which simple contact (Descarte's laws of impact, quickly disproved by Huygens) between two coalescent structures creates energy, thus constituting an exchange of information. For many years, I believed and recited this catechism without realizing its absurdity, just as mankind did not realize the absurdity of the belief that the sun circles the earth.

The truth, based on facts, is very simple. It does not require any "collapse of the physical or chemical worlds." That molecules vibrate, we have known for decades.

Every atom of every molecule and every intermolecular bond-the bridge that links the atoms-emits a group of specific frequencies. Specific frequencies of simple or complex molecules are detected at distances of billions of light-years, thanks to radio-telescopes. Biophysicists describe these frequencies as an essential physical characteristic of matter, but biologists do not consider that electromagnetic waves can play a role in molecular functions themselves. We cannot find the words "frequency" or "signal" (in the physical sense of the term) in any treatise on molecular interactions in biology, not to speak of the term "electromagnetic," use of which would be - at least in France - a cause for excommunication of any offending biologist by the scientific Papal Office...

Like Archimedes, I would have liked to have had a brilliant idea in my bathtub: "Eureka, the vibrations of molecules don't exist for them to dance the salsa at a Saturday night ball; vibrations are the tools of their trade, which allow them to send instructions to the next molecule down the line in the cascade of events which govern biological functions, and probably, to a large extent, chemical ones as well." Unfortunately, this was not the case. I followed a purely experimental approach. After eight years of research, around 1991, my experiments showed that we could transfer specific molecular signals by using an amplifier and electromagnetic coils. In July, 1995, I recorded and replayed these signals using a multimedia computer. A computer sound card only records frequencies up to about 20,000 Hz. In the course of several thousand experiments, we have led receptors (specific to simple or complex molecules) to "believe" that they are in the presence of their favorite molecules by playing the recorded frequencies of those molecules. In order to arrive at this result, two operations are necessary: 1) record the activity of the substance on a computer; 2) "replay" it to a biological system. sensitive to the same substance. Therefore, there is every reason to think that when a molecule itself is in the presence of its receptor, it does the same thing: it emits frequencies which the receptor is capable of recognizing.

To simplify, a molecular signal can be efficiently represented by a spectrum of frequencies between 20Hz and 20,000 Hz, the same range as the human voice or music. For several hundred thousand years, human beings have been relating sound frequencies to a biological mechanism: the emotions. The signal to start a love affair is not given by a resounding rendition of the Marseillaise under our new flame's balcony. Neither was Brahms' lullaby played for soldiers charging out of the trenches. Composers of background music for supermarkets or elevators are practicing neuropsychology without knowing it. High-pitched rapid sounds engender lightness of spirit, high-pitched slow sounds, sweetness, sounds both deep and rapid awaken the fighting spirit, while deep, slow sounds invoke serious emotions, sadness and mourning. These are fundamentally cerebral physico-chemical phenomena, triggered by defined frequencies. We do nothing more than this when we transmit pre-recorded molecular activities to biological systems. In essence:

1. Biological systems function like radio sets, by coresonance. If you tune a receiver to 92.6 MHz, you tune in Radio-This, because the receiver and the transmitter vibrate at the same frequency. If we change the setting a little to, say, 92.7, we no longer receive Radio-This, but Radio-That instead.

2. These advances in understanding the inmost mechanism of molecular recognition and signaling do not overturn the science of biology, and even less those of physics and chemistry. We have taken nothing away from classic descriptions, but only taken a step forward by adding to the present body of knowledge. This is the normal course of scientific progress, and there is no reason for it to provoke imprecations and anathema.

We can now understand how millions of biological molecules can communicate (at the speed of light), each with its own corresponding molecule, and it alone, the basic requirement for the functioning of biological systems...and why minute chemical modifications produce considerable functional consequences, something "structural" biologists are at a loss to explain. In deciding that only structures can have an action, biologists find themselves in a pre-Newtonian world where the movement of celestial bodies is described by Ptolemy in terms of epicycles. Hence the inability of contemporary biology to provide answers to the major pathologies of the end of this century (my