SUPERIMPOSING SPATIALLY COHERENT ELECTROMAGNETIC NOISE INHIBITS FIELD-INDUCED ABNORMALITIES IN DEVELOPING CHICK-EMBRYOS

Living cells exist in an electrically noisy environment. This has led to the so-called ''signal-to-noise'' problem whereby cells are observe d to respond to extremely-low-frequency (ELF) exogenous fields that ar e several orders of magnitude weaker than local endogenous fields asso ciated with thermal fluctuations. To resolve this dilemma, we propose that living cells are affected only by electromagnetic fields that are spatially coherent over their surface. The basic idea is that a signi ficant number of receptors must be simultaneously and coherently activ ated (biological cooperativity) to produce effects on the biochemical functioning of the cell. However, like all physical detection systems, cells are subject to the laws of conventional physics and can be conf used by noise. This suggests that a spatially coherent but temporally random noise field superimposed on a coherent ELF signal will defeat t he mechanism of discrimination against noise, and any observed field-i nduced bioeffects would be suppressed. An experimental test of this id ea was conducted using morphological abnormalities in developing chick embryos caused by electromagnetic field exposure as the endpoint. At an impressed noise amplitude comparable to the ELF field strength (but roughly one-thousandth of the thermal noise field), the increased abn ormality rate observed with only the ELF field present was reduced to a level essentially the same as for the control embryos. (C) 1994 Wile y-Liss, Inc.