Rotations of macromolecules affect nonspecific biological responses to magnetic fields

Vladimir N Binhi,Frank S Prato

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-31847-y

Abstract

We have previously proposed that there are at least two initial molecular transduction mechanisms needed to explain specific and nonspecific biological effects of weak magnetic fields. For the specific effect associated with animal magnetic navigation, the radical pair mechanism is the leading hypothesis; it associates the specialised magnetic sense with the radical pairs located in the eye retina. In contrast to the magnetic sense, nonspecific effects occur through the interaction of magnetic fields with magnetic moments dispersed over the organism. However, it is unlikely that the radical pair mechanism can explain such nonspecific phenomena. In order to explain these, we further develop our physical model for the case of magnetic moments residing in rotating molecules. It is shown that, in some conditions, the precession of the magnetic moments that reside on rotating molecules can be slowed relative to the immediate biophysical structures. In terms of quantum mechanics this corresponds to the mixing of the quantum levels of magnetic moments. Hence this mechanism is called the Level Mixing Mechanism, or the LMM. The results obtained are magnetic field-dependences that are in good agreement with known experiments where biological effects arise in response to the reversal of the magnetic field vector.

Highlights

A large number of different biological effects can be observed at weak magnetic fields (MFs) in the range 0.1–100 μ T, e.g
We have shown that the effects of a hypomagnetic field (HMF) occupy a special place among the nonspecific effects due to their higher magnitude and reproducibility and their capability of providing more precise information on the origin of the MF effects[4]
A physical mechanism for HMF effects has been proposed[5,6], which considers the dynamics of non-uniformly precessing magnetic moments in biophysical targets, or MF sensors, that are not specialised MF receptors

Summary

Rotations of the Molecular MF Sensors

It is interesting to note, that reproducible and large nonspecific magnetic effects are observed in systems with pronounced processes involving gene expression: neurite outgrowth[24], cephalic regeneration in planarians[25], morphological changes during embryogenesis[26], response to heat shock[27], cell growth and gene expression[7] in plants, the proliferation of human neuroblastoma cells[28] and of mouse nerve stem cells[29], and gravitropism in plants[30]. The probability of biophysical events that are caused by precessing magnetic moments has a resonance-like peak, Fig. 3b, provided the angular velocity of rotation and the MF vector are linearly related, Λ ~ −γH.

Discussion

Additional Information