Search arXivSearch

arXiv · 1704.06819

DNA Electromagnetic Properties and Interactions

Abstract

DNA is an essential molecule central to the survival and propagation of life, it was imperative to investigate possible electromagnetic properties inherent to it, such as the existence of any non-trivial interactions of this molecule with electromagnetic fields (beyond the usual dielectric response and damage by ionizing gamma radiations). Extensive investigations were carried out with both prokaryotic and eukaryotic purified DNA samples utilizing some of the most sensitive and precision instrumentation and methods available, while scanning the whole spectral region from 1Hz to 100KHz (in the low frequencies) and all the way to the high-frequency region of 100MHz (including investigations on the effects of 100MHz high-frequency fields as well as 2.4GHz microwave fields on the DNA). We were unable to detect any electromagnetism of any kind intrinsic to the DNA or its coupling to external noise sources, whether concentrated or diluted in water, as compared to control samples (H2O or empty chambers), neither existence of any possible spontaneous or stimulated/induced electromagnetic fields or waves emanated from both the eukaryotic and prokaryotic genetic material. Based on our measurements, we conclude that either there is no intrinsic electromagnetic activity or fields present in the DNA material, in both concentrated or diluted form, or any such activity is extremely weak in its intensity and beyond the measurement limits of current scientific methods.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

M. H. S. Bukhari, Y. Raza, S. Batool, T. Razzaki, A. Bukhari, F. Memon, M. A. Rauf, A. Rizvi, O. Bagasra. 2017-04-22. DNA Electromagnetic Properties and Interactions. https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.06819

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Signature of mechanically induced cell extrusions in cell size distribution

How a growing tissue organizes its own homeostatic state is a central question in the physics of living matter. We show that when a growing epithelial sheet counteracts increasing cell density by mechanically squeezing cells out of its plane, a homeostatic in-plane pressure emerges as a generalization of a yield stress. We find that in the quasistatic growth limit the homeostatic state is marginally stable, with a pseudogap in the distribution of local distances to the extrusion threshold pressure. Because such mechanically induced extrusions arise from an instability of individual cells, the pseudogap is imprinted in the distribution of cell areas. This provides an image-based way to test for presence of mechanically induced extrusions and we identify this signature in the developing wing epithelium of \textit{D.~melanogaster}. We expect the same principles to apply to confined three-dimensional tissues.

physics.bio-ph

Towards Accurate Prediction of Mutation-Induced Changes in Protein Structure

Proteins can possess numerous mutations relative to their wild-type amino acid sequences with minimal impact to their structure and function. However, in other cases, even a single amino acid mutation relative to the wild-type sequence can lead to a large change in structure or even a disease phenotype. While the accuracy of wild-type protein structure prediction has improved significantly in recent years, it remains difficult to accurately predict the structure of mutant proteins. Here, we characterize the local mutation-induced structural changes in proteins for a dataset of wildtype and the corresponding single-amino acid mutant x-ray crystal structures from the Protein Data Bank (PDB). We find that mutation-induced structural changes in these proteins are localized at the site of the mutation, decaying rapidly with increasing spatial distance from the mutation site. In addition, we evaluate how well AlphaFold3 can recapitulate the observed mutation-induced structural deformations in the x-ray crystal structures. We find that the accuracy of the AlphaFold3 predictions decreases strongly with increasing mutation-induced deformation. In contrast to the results for AlphaFold3, the Pearson correlation between a single physical feature, i.e. the change in solvent accessibility, and the mutation-induced deformation does not depend on the magnitude of the deformation. Our results and analyses provide a framework for further studies aimed at predicting the structural changes in proteins caused by single amino acid mutations.

physics.bio-ph

Biology and Physics

This article frames the relation between biology and physics by characterizing the former as a subdiscipline rather than a special case of the latter. To do this, we posit biological physics as the science of living matter in contrast to classic biophysics, the study of organismal properties by physical techniques. At the scale of the individual cell, living matter is nonunitary, i.e., not composed of aggregated subunits, and has features (e.g., intracellular organizational arrangements and biomolecular condensates) that are unlike any materials of the nonliving world. In transiently or constitutively multicellular forms (social microorganisms, animals, plants), living matter sustains physical processes that are generic (shared with nonliving matter, e.g., subunit communication by molecular diffusion in cellular slime molds), biogeneric (analogous to nonliving matter but realized through cellular activities, e.g., subunit demixing in animal embryos) or nongeneric (pertaining to sui generis materials, e.g., budding of active solids in plants). This "forms of matter" perspective is philosophically situated in the dialectical materialism of Engels and Hessen and the multilevel physicalism of Neurath and the logical empiricists. We counterpose this view to informationism and to genetic and other hierarchically reductionist physical theories of biological systems and highlight open questions regarding incompletely characterized and enigmatic forms of living matter.

physics.bio-ph