Radio–transmitting bacteria?
Radio "Microbe": Bacteria can emit radio waves using their DNAKirill Stasevich, Compulenta
The researchers calculated the frequency of radiation produced by an electron as it moves through a ring of bacterial DNA. It lies in the low-frequency radio band.
Can living organisms emit radio waves? The assumption is strange, if not ridiculous: with all the variety of artificial sources of low–frequency radiation in natural nature, stars, pulsars and lightning have this property - that is, objects are more than inanimate. It is very difficult, without resorting to outright fiction, to suggest a mechanism for such radiation in living organisms.
But a group of biophysicists from Northeastern University in Boston (USA) managed to offer a completely plausible way in which bacteria can broadcast their own "radio". In their research, scientists relied on the fact that bacterial DNA in the vast majority of cases is a closed loop.
A ring of bacterial DNA in the field of an electron microscope (photo by J. C. Revy, ISM).
They presented this DNA in the form of a closed loop, along which an electron can "run" from atom to atom throughout the ring. As a quantum particle, an electron, when moving, will take on different energy values, that is, move between energy levels, radiating energy at the same time.
The frequency of "jumps" on these levels will correspond to the frequency of radiation.
According to calculations by Allen Widom, which he made with his colleagues, the frequencies of electron radiation during torsion along the DNA ring correspond to 0.5, 1 and 1.5 kHz. And here it should be noted that signals of exactly such frequencies were previously recorded in Escherichia coli.
Electromagnetic low–frequency radiation of bacteria is a topic that has been balancing between mysticism and science for a long time. The most unbiased wording that could be obtained on this issue sounded like "this is a dark matter." In 2009, Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier (one of those awarded for the discovery of the AIDS virus) published data on the detection and measurement of bacterial radio emission. But due to some extravagance of the respected Nobel laureate, the information was not taken seriously in the scientific community. Scientists might have believed it if someone had offered them a reliable mechanism by which bacteria can create electromagnetic radiation. Without this, any data on the observed radiation was perceived as an artifact.
And this mechanism is described by researchers from Boston in an article posted on the arXiv website: A. Widom et al., Electromagnetic Signals from Bacterial DNA.
It is known that bacterial – and not only – cells can use high-frequency radiation to communicate and replenish energy reserves. If living cells are able to generate low-frequency waves, then what prevents them from using such a "radio" for their own purposes?
Prepared based on the materials of Technology Review: How Bacteria Could Generate Radio waves.
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