A Biophotonic Theory of Evolution

[Disclaimer: I am not a biologist, nor do I play one on TV. So anything I say here is purely speculative and open to refutation.]

I have never been a believer in the standard model of evolution. I think natural selection is a part of the process, but I don't buy the random mutation model. Mutations occur, but I don't think most of them are random, and I suspect that the truly random mutations (such as transcription errors) don't often survive.

Here is the definition of evolution provided at Wikipedia:

In biology, evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population from one generation to the next. These traits are the expression of genes that are copied and passed on to offspring during reproduction. Mutations in these genes can produce new or altered traits, resulting in heritable differences between organisms. New traits can also come from transfer of genes between populations, as in migration, or between species, in horizontal gene transfer. Evolution occurs when these heritable differences become more common or rare in a population, either non-randomly through natural selection or randomly through genetic drift.

Natural selection is a process that causes heritable traits that are helpful for survival and reproduction to become more common, and harmful traits to become more rare. This occurs because organisms with advantageous traits pass on more copies of these heritable traits to the next generation.^[1][2] Over many generations, adaptations occur through a combination of successive, small, random changes in traits, and natural selection of those variants best-suited for their environment.^[3] In contrast, genetic drift produces random changes in the frequency of traits in a population. Genetic drift arises from the role chance plays in whether a given individual will survive and reproduce.

The premise of Intelligent Design, which I also reject, is that evolution is guided by a divine hand -- God. These "theorists" also reject the role chance or randomness might play in evolution. But rather than looking for other mechanisms of action, they simply bail out and designate God as the principle behind evolution. This is just sloppy thinking designed to get creationism into science through the back door.

Ken Wilber has been accused by some of falling into the ID camp, simply because he refers to a self-organizing principle (based on the work of Jantsch) behind evolution, which he refers to as Eros:

This is a huge hole in the mere chance and selection argument. These items are all meant when I use the metaphor of a 100 mutations. I am fully aware that selection carries forth each previous selection (which still has problems in itself—as you point out, why would a half wing make running easier???), but even if you give that to the evolutionists (which I am willing to do), it still has this gaping hole in it.

The alternative is to see some sort of Eros operating in the universe. It doesn’t have to be a metaphysical force, just an intrinsic force of self‑organization. As Jantsch put it, evolution is “self-transcendence through self-organization.” This is exactly the point Prigogine was making with dissipative structures, and exactly the point I am making when referring to wings or eyes: they are metaphors and examples for this extraordinary capacity of creative emergence that is intrinsic to the universe (exactly as Whitehead explained it).

Invoking Eros sets off alarms among the scientifically minded. But Eros, as defined by Socrates, does fairly well stand-in for a self-organizing principle:

Eros, in the Socratic logos, can be defined as the longing for wholeness or completeness, a daemon whose aim is to reach the knowledge without ever owning her and is used to describe fulfillment between man/woman and man/Gods.

Sounds good in a metaphorical sense, but I'm still not buying it. There may be some kind of Kosmic principle at work at the macro level, but for now that can be nothing more than fun speculation.

So at the micro level, which is the only place we can really look for answers, I'm also not buying the random mutation theory. Evolution may look random in some ways, but in others it looks entirely sensible. And in order for it to look sensible, there is no need to invoke any form of outside force or metaphysical principle.

I suspect that in the next 25 years, biology will begin to look to biophotonic communication between DNA strands -- both within an organism and between the organism and other organisms in its environment -- as an explanation for evolution.

From Wikipedia, one view of biophotons:

Russian, German, and other biophotonics experts, adopting the term "biophotons" from Fritz Albert Popp, have theorized that they may be involved in various cell functions, such as mitosis, or even that they may be produced and detected by the DNA in the cell nucleus. Proponents of the theory of biophotons claim that experiments have been done which support this hypothesis--e.g., an experiment of Gurwitsch in which growth in one plant seemed to stimulate growth in another across a quartz barrier that blocked chemical messengers, indirectly suggesting that biophotons in the ultraviolet range provided the stimulus. However, debate surrounds such evidence and conclusions, and the difficulty of teasing out the effects of any supposed biophotons amid the other numerous chemical interactions between cells makes it difficult to devise a testable hypothesis.

Some groups have further speculated that these emissions may be part of a system of cell-to-cell communication, which may be of greater complexity than the modes of cell communication already known. These ideas would then suggest that biophotons may be important for the development of larger structures, such as organs and organisms.

Proponents additionally claim that studies have shown that injured cells will emit a higher biophoton rate than normal cells, and organisms with illnesses will likewise emit a brighter light, which has been interpreted as implying a sort of distress signal being given off. However, injured cells are under higher amounts of oxidative stress, which ultimately is the source of the light, and whether this constitutes a "distress signal" or simply a background chemical process is yet to be demonstrated.^[1] One hypothesis is this postulated minor form of communication first became common as single-cell organisms began to cooperate to form complex organisms, using biophotons as a less effective neural system. According to another hypothesis,^[2] this form of biophotonic signaling, primarily in the blood, continues to play a role in the reception, transmission, and processing of electromagnetic data.

The thing that makes biophotons unique is that the light is not random and/or disorganized, it is coherent, meaning that it may very well contain some form of information. The acknowledged expert in the field is Popp, referenced above in the Wiki article:

Given this background we understand that two completely opposite interpretations of this phenomenon come up, i.e. the biochemical theory (BCT) and the coherence theory (CT). It is amazing that both the BCT and the opposite "biophysical theory" CT take the rather low intensity as an essential point in their arguments. According to the BCT,^5-6 biophoton emission is some kind of "waste" of the metabolic events taking place permanently within the cells. The BCT indicates some imperfections in chemical reactions which by returning to thermal equilibrium emit overshoot energy of chemically induced optical transitions, mainly linked to radical reactivity of oxidation processes.

The CT, on the other hand, points to the low intensity as an indication of nonclassical light which may display even sub-Poissonian photocount statistics and may provide thus an optimized optical communication channel in biological systems within living matter of "optimized" high optical density².

Popp has been the primary advocate, along with Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, of the coherence theory.

Supposing Popp is correct (and yes, this is a big supposition), then DNA-emitted photons might be a way for cells to communicate with each other -- and for organisms to communicate with their environment. It is possible that DNA decides when a mutation is necessary and triggers the mechanisms through the transcription process based on the current environmental conditions.

A recent study of plants showed that "children" of a plant grow better and faster when in proximity to the "parent" plant.

A University of Virginia study, published in the Nov. 16 issue of the journal Science, demonstrates that plants grown in the same setting as their maternal plant performed almost 3½ times better than those raised in a different environment — indicating that maternal plants give cues to their offspring that help them adapt to their environmental conditions.

Evolutionary biologist Laura Galloway, an associate professor of biology at the University of Virginia, recently completed a study of the American bellflower, a native wildflower that commonly grows in both shaded areas and areas that receive full sunlight for at least part of the day. She focused on the transmission of environmental information between maternal plants and their offspring.

Galloway planted some seeds in light conditions similar to their maternal plants and some in different light. She found that plants growing in the same setting as their maternal plant outperformed those planted in a different environment. The work was conducted in a natural habitat at the University of Virginia’s Mountain Lake Biological Station in Southwest Virginia.

(Emphasis added)

The study offered no mechanism of action for this result. But what if the result is due, at least in part, to biophotonic communication between the "mother" and the "offspring"? This would explain a variety of studies of this type. It might also explain why a bulb planted too shallow in the soil will "push" itself deeper. Somehow the bulb "knows" its environment.

Here is how Mae-Won Ho explains the current reliance on genomic studies and why they are insufficient to explain the complexity of evolutionary biology:

Biology today remains dominated by the genetic paradigm. The genome is seen as the repository of genetic information controlling the development of the organism, but otherwise insulated from the environment, and passed on unchanged to the next generation except for rare random mutations. The much publicized Human Genome Project is being promoted on that basis (Ho, 1995e). The genetic paradigm has already been fatally undermined at least ten years ago, when a plethora of `fluid genome' processes were first discovered, and many more have come to light since. These processes destabilize and alter genes and genomes in the course of development, some of the genetic changes are so well correlated with the environment that they are referred to as "directed mutations". Many of the genetic changes are passed on to the next generation. As I pointed out at the time, heredity can no longer be seen to reside solely in the DNA passed on from one generation to the next. Instead, the stability and repeatability of development -- which we recognize as heredity -- is distributed in the whole gamut of dynamic feedback interrelationships between organism and environment from the socioecological to the genetic. All of these may leave imprints that are passed on to subsequent generations: as cultural traditions or artefacts, maternal or cytoplasmic effects, gene expression states, as well as genetic (DNA sequence) changes (see Ho, 1986; 1996).

Based on the available research, it is no longer possible to assign genetic mutations to random processes. The genome is not a self-contained universe as the randomness paradigm would seem to suggest. Rather, evolution is a complex interaction between DNA strands within the organism, between organisms within the same species, and between those organisms and their environment -- directed mutation.

It seems to me that there is sufficient evidence to begin looking at "intelligent" DNA as the source for an organized and premeditated source of genetic mutation resulting in changes within species and the eventual emergence of new species -- all dictated in large part by the conditions of the environment.

I hope to post a more detailed explanation of how biophotonic evolution might work.

Tags: A Biophotonic Theory of Evolution, biophotons, biology, natural selection, random mutations, transcription, intelligent design, Ken Wilber, Eros, self-organizing principle, DNA, ritz Albert Popp, Mae-Wan Ho, coherent light, coherence theory, genome, directed mutations