Re: Digital Biology of Benveniste

Jerry Wayne Decker ( jwdatwork@yahoo.com )
Mon, 16 Aug 1999 13:17:19 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Folks!

And even better, excerpts from the full Cambridge
lecture that bring a whole nother meaning to the term
'virus' when applied to computers;

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/water.memory/milgrom.html

Benveniste suggested that the specific effects of
biologically active molecules such as adrenalin,
nicotine and caffeine, and the immunological
signatures of viruses and bacteria, can be recorded
and digitised using a computer sound-card.

A keystroke later, and these signals can be winging
their way across the globe, courtesy of the Internet.

Biological systems far away from their activating
molecules can then - he suggested - be triggered
simply by playing back the recordings.

If molecules could talk, what would they sound like?

More specifically, can we eavesdrop on their
conversations, record them, and play them back? The
answer to these last three questions is, according to
Benveniste, a resounding "Oui!" He further suggested
that these "recordings" can make molecules respond in
the same way as they do when they react.

Contradicting the way biologists think biochemical
reactions occur, he claims molecules do not have to be
in close proximity to affect each other. "It's like
listening to Pavarotti or Elton John," Benveniste
explained. "We hear the sound and experience
emotions, whether they're live or on CD."

For example, anger produces adrenalin. When adrenalin
molecules bind to their receptor sites, they set off a
string of biological events that, among other things,
make blood vessels contract.

Biologists say that adrenalin is acting as a molecular
signalling device but, Benveniste asks, what is the
real nature of the signal? And how come the adrenalin
molecules specifically target their receptors and no
others, at incredible speed?

According to Benveniste, if the cause of such
biochemical events were simply due to random
collisions between adrenalin molecules and their
receptors (the currently accepted theory of molecular
signalling), then it should take longer than it does
to get angry.

Benveniste's explanation starts innocuously enough
with a musical analogy. Two vibrating strings close
together in frequency will produce a "beat".

The length of this beat increases as the two
frequencies approach each other. Eventually, when
they are the same, the beat disappears. This is
the way musicians tune their instruments, and
Benveniste uses the analogy to explain his
water-memory theory.

Thus, all molecules are made from atoms which are
constantly vibrating and emitting infrared radiation
in a highly complex manner. These infrared vibrations
have been detected for years by scientists, and are a
vital part of their armoury of methods for identifying
molecules.

However, precisely because of the complexity of their
infrared vibrations, molecules also produce much lower
"beat" frequencies.

It turns out that these beats are within the human
audible range (20 to 20,000 Hertz) and are specific
for every different molecule. Thus, as well as
radiating in the infrared region, molecules also
broadcast frequencies in the same range as the human
voice.

This is the molecular signal that Benveniste detects
and records.

If molecules can broadcast, then they should also be
able to receive. The specific broadcast of one
molecular species will be picked up by another,
"tuned" by its molecular structure to receive it.

Benveniste calls this matching of broadcast with
reception "co-resonance", and says it works like a
radio set. Thus, when you tune your radio to, say,
Classic FM, both your set and the transmitting
station are vibrating at the same frequency.

Twitch the dial a little, and you're listening to
Radio 1: different tuning, different sounds.

This, Benveniste claims, is how millions of biological
molecules manage to communicate at the speed of light
with their own corresponding molecule and no other.

It also explains why minute changes in the structure
of a molecule can profoundly alter its biological
effect.

It is not that these tiny structural changes make it a
bad fit with its biological receptor (the classical
lock-and-key approach).

The structural modifications "detune" the molecule to
its receptor. What is more, and just like radio sets
and receivers, the molecules do not have to be close
together for communication to take place.

So what do molecules sound like? "At the moment we
don't quite know," says Didier Guillonnet,
Benveniste's colleague at the Digital Research
Laboratory.

"When we record a molecule such as caffeine, for
example, we should get a spectrum, but it seems more
like noise. However, when we play the caffeine
recording back to a biological system sensitive to it,
the system reacts.

We are only recording and replaying; at the moment we
cannot recognise a pattern." "But," Benveniste adds,
"the biological systems do. We've sent the
caffeine signal across the Atlantic by standard
telecommunications and it's still produced an
effect."

The effect is measured on a "biological system"
such as a piece of living tissue. Benveniste claims,
for instance, that the signal from molecules of
heparin - a component of the blood-clotting system -
slows down coagulation of blood when transmitted over
the Internet from a laboratory in Europe to another in
the US.

===

=================================
Please respond to jdecker@keelynet.com
as I am writing from my work email of
jwdatwork@yahoo.com.........thanks!
=================================
_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com