The Spark of Life | Radiolab Podcast

What this episode is about

The discussion explores the intersection of biology and physics through the lens of applied biophysics, emphasizing how understanding the mechanisms behind living processes, like the body's reactions, can bridge the gap between these two scientific realms. It highlights the significance of interdisciplinary approaches in comprehending life and its interactions with the world.

Key takeaways

• In the dance of proteins, it's wild how the right key finds its lock amidst cellular chaos.
• For biophysicists like Nirosha, understanding biology isn't just a study; it's a messy, molecular love affair.
• Lock and key? More like a janitor tossing keys—precision amidst cellular clutter astonishes the mind.
• In a world of billion interactions, the speed of molecular signaling makes high-speed internet seem slow.
• Sometimes, the greatest discoveries begin with a simple, persistent 'I don't know'—fueling the quest for knowledge.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Molly Webster (Host) · 18 min speaking
• Nirosha Murugan (Guest) · 18 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Nirosha Murugan
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Nirosha Murugan, Alexander Gurwitsch
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Nirosha Murugan
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Nirosha Murugan
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Nirosha Murugan
6. 25:00 – 30:00: Nirosha Murugan
7. 30:00 – 35:00: Nirosha Murugan, Wilfred Laurier University
8. 35:00 – 36:02: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Notable quotes from "The Spark of Life | Radiolab Podcast"

• Questions before we get started? NIROSHA MURUGAN: You can ask me so many questions. MOLLY: But for Nirosha Murugan, they go hand in hand. NIROSHA MURUGAN: I'm Nirosha Murugan…

  about Nirosha Murugan · at 1:27

• NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. MOLLY: What Nirosha stumbled into was a weird little corner of biology pioneered by this Russian biologist, Alexander Gurwitsch. In the 1920s, he did a…

  about Alexander Gurwitsch · at 7:58

• MOLLY: Thank you to Nirosha Murugan. You can find her at Wilfred Laurier University in Canada.

  about Wilfred Laurier University · at 33:36

• [LISTENER: Hi, this is Celeste calling from Utah. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation.…

  about Alfred P. Sloan Foundation · at 35:41

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Nirosha Murugan — Person · Main guest · 61 mentions · first at 0:20
  Applied biophysicist interviewed about biophoton emission from living cells, potential mechanisms (mitochondria, microtubules) and diagnostic uses (e.g., cancer signatures).
• Alexander Gurwitsch — Person · Referenced expert / historical pioneer · 1 mention · first at 8:06
  Cited as an early 1920s researcher whose onion-root experiments suggested cells emit light, providing historical grounding for the episode’s topic.

Companies & orgs

• Wilfred Laurier University — Company · 1 mention · first at 33:36
• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation — Company · 1 mention · first at 35:51

Full transcript with timestamps

0:02 [RADIOLAB INTRO] MOLLY WEBSTER: Wait. Wait, am I glowing right now? NIROSHA MURUGAN: You certainly are. Yeah. MOLLY: Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Molly Webster. So I was a bio major, and we had to take maybe one physics class, and then we never thought about it again. And this is often how it goes in the sciences. You've got biology—the environment, animals, our bodies, the kind of organic, messy, physical stuff—that's on one side. And then you have physics—all the abstract stuff, waves, energy, invisible particles—that's all on the other side.

1:22 MOLLY: What? I know how to use these. MOLLY: They very much feel like two different worlds. MOLLY: Can I ask you a couple questions before we get started? NIROSHA MURUGAN: You can ask me so many questions. MOLLY: But for Nirosha Murugan, they go hand in hand. NIROSHA MURUGAN: I'm Nirosha Murugan, an applied biophysicist from Waterloo, Canada. And most biophysicists look at mostly bio. I'm on the other end, who likes to be 50-50. MOLLY: What I learned from talking to Nirosha, and what you're going to hear in our conversation today, it is definitely a leap into the unknown, but it starts with a very simple idea about how living things—bacteria, cactuses, humans, whatever—how they do what they do. And it's an idea that made me think about the kind of mark we leave on the world. So we're gonna start with Nirosha as a student. NIROSHA MURUGAN: I mean, I can tell you a very specific moment in grad school that... MOLLY: Tell me.

2:17 NIROSHA MURUGAN: When I was living in the dorms, and I was making mashed potatoes, and I burnt myself. And then I don't know why I thought this, but I thought it was really exciting. MOLLY: NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah, how quickly that information of me burning my hand went into my body for me to remove my hand. Like, that signal had to go up my arm, things had to change and move all the way back down my arm for me to remove it. MOLLY: Mm-hmm? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Think of the molecular interactions. MOLLY: Nirosha says she was standing there thinking about all the little molecules in her skin and nerves and spine, all these proteins bumping into each other, interacting and passing along a signal—burn, ow!—until it reached her spine. And then a signal goes back, more proteins bumping into each other, interacting, signaling—move, move your hand, move your hand—back down her arm all in a split second. And suddenly it just seemed impossible. NIROSHA MURUGAN: When we think about a protein,

3:15 proteins have a very specific shape. And that shape determines their function. So when you think of a cell doing what it needs to do, on the surface of the cell, there are other proteins, which is what we call "receptors." And those receptors have a shape to them. And for them to interact, there needs to be a physical interaction of that protein into the receptor. MOLLY: Yeah. There's this shorthand that we use for talking about biology, which is that a lock and a key go together, and that, like, makes things happen in the cell.

3:47 NIROSHA MURUGAN: Correct. MOLLY: So—so something—so, like, something is a shape and it fits into a hole. NIROSHA MURUGAN: It's that simple. That's the fundamental basis of biomolecular interactions. But thinking about all of that for that one specific molecule to find that perfect receptor just seemed like it was too easy. MOLLY: Really? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. MOLLY: Like, wow. This is why you were a better bio student than I was. Because I was, like, "I don't know. There's a lock, there's a key. Like, one of them is the lock shape, one of them is the key shape. The key goes into the lock. It's just floating along. It finds it."

4:22 NIROSHA MURUGAN: So that—that's exactly—that's the model that didn't sit well with me. So imagine you're one of those, like, janitors with, like, a big ring of keys. How do you find that right key for the right lock in the right amount of time to induce signaling? MOLLY: Hmm. NIROSHA MURUGAN: You gotta go through all those keys. You gotta try, iterate through random probability, and get the right shape in the right space. MOLLY: And with—also if you think about, like, the interior of a cell, it's like there's thousands of other proteins, and there's—and there's, you know, trash, and there's a nucleus and there's, I don't know, endoplasmic reticulum. There's, like, all sorts of things inside a cell that are between the lock and the key, between the two shapes finding each other. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Correct. This is what I was, like, uncomfortable with is think of that time, and think of the probability of you finding your

5:09 shape in one-thousandths of a second. MOLLY: Damn! NIROSHA MURUGAN: It's pretty fast. MOLLY: It's like the janitor took the ring of keys and just threw it at a lock, and somehow the right key on that ring gets into the lock and, like, makes it across the space even though there's, you know, so much material in between. NIROSHA MURUGAN: In the middle. Yeah. Exactly. And that's just like one interaction. MOLLY: Huh. NIROSHA MURUGAN: And so if you kind of break it down that way—that's what I learned in school— things weren't adding up. There's something missing. There had to be something else to induce signaling inside of a cell. So my advanced immunology teacher in grad school, I, after class went up to him, and I was like, "Well, how does that lock-and-key model make sense? Think of the time and the probability." And I asked him that question, and he said, "I don't know, but this is how it works." I'm like, "No, but how?" Like, you know, I'm that annoying grad student. "But, like,

6:07 can you tell me a little bit more? Like, where does the time fit in?" And he said, "This is just the way it is. I don't know how it works." And that, "I don't know," was enough for me to figure out maybe I can go find out the "I don't know."

6:33 MOLLY: As Nirosha kept puzzling this, she thought maybe there's something in physics, the world where particles are always zipping around really fast, maybe there's something there that could help me out. NIROSHA MURUGAN: The gap that I was trying to fill is that how can the chemistry, how can the physical interactions occur so quickly? Why can't we have the same thing, but through non-physical interactions? So the way that I kind of like picture it is maybe if you had a door with a tap card access versus an actual old-school lock and key, you can open the door both ways. Either the proteins can do it; that will take a longer time to do the behavior, or like a wireless tap, where you can just kind of put a card against a key receiver, and there's a— you know, a signal or a door opens. MOLLY: Mm-hmm.

7:23 NIROSHA MURUGAN: So okay, what—what can be faster that cells can use to communicate? What is the fastest signal that we know? Light. It is the fastest modality that exists in our universe. And then you go out—or what I did was went out to research to see if anyone else has asked those questions. And what—how—and how they test them. MOLLY: Ooh. Okay. NIROSHA MURUGAN: And through my research I found the original papers that showed that biology emits light. MOLLY: Biology emits light. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. MOLLY: What Nirosha stumbled into was a weird little corner of biology pioneered by this Russian biologist, Alexander Gurwitsch. In the 1920s, he did a series of experiments on onion roots to understand how they grow. And I'm gonna be real with you: the original paper's in Russian, it is kind of a crazily complicated experimental set up, but basically, in the process of doing these experiments, he made a discovery that seemed to

8:34 suggest that the onion cells inside the roots were making and releasing their own light. NIROSHA MURUGAN: It was the very first instance that someone thought, "Hey, biology emits light." That was the first experiment. What we now know is every cell in your body does give off light. MOLLY: Every cell? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Every cell. MOLLY: Any kind? Heart cell? Liver cell? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Brain cell. MOLLY: Cheek cell? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Skin cell, liver. MOLLY: Tongue cell? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Everything. And the 'how' kind of comes down to the part of the cell that's actually giving off light, which is involved with metabolism. So if anything can metabolize, plants give off light. Shrimp give off light. Literally everything that is alive emits light. MOLLY: So I'm glowing right now?

9:29 NIROSHA MURUGAN: You sure are. MOLLY: You're glowing right now? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Absolutely. MOLLY: Why can't I see it? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Because that—that's a good question. So... MOLLY: Finally we get to one. NIROSHA MURUGAN: No, that's fantastic. We physically can't see it. It's because the intensity of light is so weak. And, you know, it has to come and go through all this tissue to come outside so that we could see it. And so if you take a cell in a dish, any cell in a dish, it will give off light. And we now know very confidently that it's wavelength specific. MOLLY: What does that mean?

10:02 NIROSHA MURUGAN: Different rates of metabolism will induce different wavelengths of light, so in different colors. MOLLY: So not only am I emitting light or cells are emitting light, they could be emitting light of different color? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Correct. MOLLY: Wait a second, so when my friends try and, like, drag me down to get my aura read, is that this? NIROSHA MURUGAN: So the intensity of light is definitely not as bright as some of the—the aura pictographs that you might see. MOLLY: Okay. NIROSHA MURUGAN: For us to detect it, we have to have an ultra-dark room and use these high sensitive detectors to even detect one photon. MOLLY: Hmm. Okay, so if I'm a cell and I'm giving off light—and maybe we have to pick a specific cell, I don't know—how does that actually work? NIROSHA MURUGAN: So let's dig into that a little bit. We know that light gets emitted from cells. The question now is where exactly is it coming

11:00 from? That's the question that I get all the time: What's the mechanism? My hypothesis is that most of it kind of comes down to the mitochondria. MOLLY: So you probably know this. One of the structures inside the cell is the mitochondria. It looks like a microscopic kidney bean with tiny little folds inside of it, and it is often called the "powerhouse of the cell." Hey, internet! It creates all the energy that makes us run, so that's neurons firing, muscles contracting, bodies working, it all comes from the mitochondria. And the way that works is molecules will pass electrons back and forth to each other all along the inner folds, and that process of passing releases energy. NIROSHA MURUGAN: So in that process, the electron goes from a high energy all the way down to a low energy state.

12:02 MOLLY: Is, like, a high-energy electron like a kid with a lot of sugar, and then, like, a low-energy electron is like when they come down off the sugar? NIROSHA MURUGAN: That's one way to look at it. Yeah, so during that hop, it releases energy, which is light. MOLLY: Hmm. This part is like the juicy part. So you're saying that—I don't know, we're giving off light because we're doing fun things with our electrons. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Because we're alive. We're—because yeah. MOLLY: There are a number of different ideas about where light could be coming from inside the cell. It could be these electrons, it could be a build up and release of charged particles. It could be something having to do with fatty acids. It could be a combination of things. For Nirosha, she's finding that when she interrupts that electron chain, the light changes. NIROSHA MURUGAN: If the electron doesn't make it, there should be no light, right? That's the logic. MOLLY: Mm-hmm.

12:56 NIROSHA MURUGAN: And that's what we're starting to find. MOLLY: Do you have a sense of how many photons a cell is emitting at any moment? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yes. So when we measured it— so if you take a dish of brain cells from a rat, if it's just at rest just doing nothing really, you probably get around a hundred photons a second. When you add... MOLLY: How—a dish of brain cells. Like, how many brain cells is that? NIROSHA MURUGAN: About a million? MOLLY: So, say, a million brain cells... NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. MOLLY:... emitting a hundred photons a second. NIROSHA MURUGAN: A second.

13:34 MOLLY: As a group. NIROSHA MURUGAN: As a group, yeah. MOLLY: Okay. NIROSHA MURUGAN: And then when you activate them, we get signals anywhere from a thousand to two thousand photons a second. MOLLY: Okay. Okay, wait. I got really lost in an image of, like, the mitochondria just releasing, like, fireworks all the time. Like, I was like, "Oh, these little cells are popping off. It's like after a baseball game on the fourth of July." NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah, that's probably accurate. MOLLY: And is it that light that I might potentially be seeing if I had an amazingly dark space? NIROSHA MURUGAN: That's exactly it. Yeah.

14:11 MOLLY: Okay, why did I not learn about this? NIROSHA MURUGAN: That's an excellent question. That's something that I would like to change. I think there's a lot of resistance to trying to understand this. About, like, 10 years ago, when I first started this stuff, I had my first backlash when I presented this as a graduate student at a conference. MOLLY: Oh! NIROSHA MURUGAN: It was awful. MOLLY: Wait, what happened? NIROSHA MURUGAN: I presented our first—because I was really excited about this, so I wanted to incorporate this into my graduate thesis. And oh boy, did I get it. "Oh, this is noise. This is not science. You're gonna jeopardize your career.

14:52 Stop this. Go back into cell biology." MOLLY: I wonder if some of it is like, people have been like, "Meh, it's bullshit." NIROSHA MURUGAN: Mmm. MOLLY: Because it's like we've already talked about auras. NIROSHA MURUGAN: MOLLY: I could imagine, like, a lot of folks being like, "No, this isn't legit." NIROSHA MURUGAN: I think there's a lot of that, but within the last decade, it's not just me. There's several other researchers across the globe. So now there's an acceptance of okay, we'll believe it. There's light coming off of biology.

15:22 Now the resistance is okay, we accept that there's light coming off, but it's noise. It's not meaningful light that's used in biology. So what I'm looking into now is okay, light's being generated from the mitochondria. Does that light carry some form of information that the cell can use to do what it needs to do? MOLLY: Is it purposeful and then being utilized? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. MOLLY: By the body? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. So I was thinking okay, we're sitting in a bath of light that's coming from this big ball of fire which we call the sun. Does this light have any impact on our physiology?

15:58 Like, you know, okay, before I understand internal light, what does external light do? MOLLY: I see. You were just like, how are we interacting with external light? Does any of that apply... NIROSHA MURUGAN: To the internal. MOLLY:... to the internal light we're making? NIROSHA MURUGAN: The light's the same. The photon is the same. For example, there are these proteins called opsins in your eyes that help convert different wavelengths of light that help regulate circadian rhythms. MOLLY: I guess that makes sense to me because the eyeball is the light...

16:28 NIROSHA MURUGAN: Sensing organ. MOLLY: Light-sensing organ. And so it senses light. But that's where my light interaction, like, shuts down. And you're—sounds like you're saying there's more light interactions happening. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. I mean, if you go to any literature, the first thing that'll come up is vitamin D synthesis, is that okay, the sun hits your skin and your skin processes vitamin D. And, you know, that does a lot of things for metabolism. MOLLY: So you're saying that my skin is working with the sun. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Absolutely. Absolutely.

17:00 MOLLY: So, like, sun hits me. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Correct. MOLLY: And then what does my body do? NIROSHA MURUGAN: The vitamin D precursors absorb a certain wavelength from the sun. MOLLY: Absorb a wavelength? NIROSHA MURUGAN: A wavelength, yeah. There's information in that light. And they convert shape. That shape is what we can absorb. MOLLY: Oh my God, I never thought of us as so plant-like. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. Yeah, we are essentially like energetic converters, converting sunlight into energy for our life. MOLLY: Wait, is that the only direct interaction I have with the wavelengths from the sun that I'm, like, actively converting? NIROSHA MURUGAN: No. We have light receptors in our brain. MOLLY: It seems so dark in there!

17:41 NIROSHA MURUGAN: Exactly. Our pigment cells. Like, you know, the melanocytes. Hemoglobin that carries the oxygen within your red blood cells absorbs light. MOLLY: Okay. NIROSHA MURUGAN: There are a lot more. And we're starting to see more and more as people start to look at interactions with light, we can see that molecules have inherent abilities to absorb light. MOLLY: We as creatures have evolved with the sun for so long that there are many, many elements of our cells that are able to absorb light. And so now the question is: if that's the case, could the light coming from inside of our cells also be absorbed? Could it be used purposefully to trigger some process in us? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah, that's a good question. We don't know. My hypothesis is that the cell generating light is purposeful, but we don't have the evidence to strongly say yes or no. MOLLY: Interesting. Like, so we really are in

18:40 a lot of, like, theoretical ideas. Like, once we get beyond the revelation—which will be a revelation to a lot of people—that biological material, cells, me, you, are emitting light, then a lot of the questions that come after that of, like, how, why, when... NIROSHA MURUGAN: What does it mean? MOLLY: What does it mean? That's TBD. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Those are all next steps. So I think yeah, there's some—like, a lot more questions to be asked. MOLLY: Hmm. MOLLY: Coming up, Nirosha tries to find out what the light inside our bodies might be doing. Like, what are those little photons up to? The cellular fireworks continue after the break.

19:44 MOLLY: Hey, I'm Molly Webster. We are back. We're stepping into a world of questions, and one of the first ones Nirosha wants to tackle is how what seems like a cellular fireworks show might actually be more like a laser or something. NIROSHA MURUGAN: I mean, and then the next question: If this light that's coming off of these mitochondria... MOLLY: Uh-huh. NIROSHA MURUGAN:... if it's purposeful, how is it getting from point A to point B in the cell? MOLLY: Like, if there's a purpose to the light, and it's... NIROSHA MURUGAN: Directed.

20:16 MOLLY: And it's directed. It's a sentinel of information, like, I don't know. Isn't it a photon? Don't they just flow through things when it's just like—pew? NIROSHA MURUGAN: But photons scatter, right? MOLLY: Okay. NIROSHA MURUGAN: So it—like, photons, when it gets released, it's not like, "I'm going this direction." It'll be scattered. MOLLY: I'm not going north. I'm just an explosion... NW: Yeah. MOLLY:... of photons. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Of photons. And if—if we are gonna say that it's purposeful, it needs to be guided into a destination.

20:40 MOLLY: So then your question is how does it get from A to B without going off course in a photon-like manner? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Correct. And, like, what is the biology that would support that? And there is some evidence suggesting that maybe the cytoskeleton is a means to guide photons. MOLLY: What's that? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Cytoskeleton? MOLLY: Yeah. NIROSHA MURUGAN: It's the skeleton, the scaffolding of the cell. MOLLY: Okay. NIROSHA MURUGAN: It's specifically made up of various proteins, and the one of our interest within this scaffold is called microtubules, that form in a long, rod-like structure. They're the ones that help create that shape of the cell.

21:16 MOLLY: So—so every cell is filled with individual little tubules... NIROSHA MURUGAN: Little rods. MOLLY:... that are help giving it its shape—little rods. And your—your question was: Do those things suck up some of the light? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Correct. Because if you look at images of a cell, you can actually see mitochondria really, really close to the cytoskeletal rods. And they get moved along the cytoskeleton like little train tracks to physically move within cells. MOLLY: Oh, mitochondria themselves will attach onto these microtubules and move around. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Mm-hmm. Yes. And that's how things move within the cell. It's not just like random blobs floating around.

22:00 MOLLY: I don't know. It sounded like everything was floating. NIROSHA MURUGAN: MOLLY: It's a little tram system inside the cell. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. MOLLY: That's cute! NIROSHA MURUGAN: MOLLY: And, like, things hop on and off. Okay. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Exactly. They're called kinesins and dyneins. But... MOLLY: Okay. I'm gonna stick with trams. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Sure. But so, you know, if the mitochondria are in close proximity to these railway tracks or these microtubules, the light that's being emitted could be absorbed by that microtubule and be propagated down that— that track. Like a fiber optic cable. MOLLY: Huh!

22:35 NIROSHA MURUGAN: And so what we're testing right now is a series of experiments to see if the microtubule is that biological fiber optic cable. MOLLY: Okay, but do you have any proof thus far that that light is not just being cast off like fireworks into the cellular night, that it is actually being moved from an A to a B? NIROSHA MURUGAN: We are working on that currently right now. MOLLY: Hmm. NIROSHA MURUGAN: But we do have strong evidence to show that the light that's being generated from neural cells—your brain cells—they are not random, that they are tied to purposeful activity of those neurons. MOLLY: So when there's activity in the brain, there's light in the brain? NIROSHA MURUGAN: That's correct.

23:26 MOLLY: I mean, do you have any hypotheses of, like, what information light might be carrying inside the brain? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Well, it's the same—it's the same kind of question we can—what kind of information does electricity carry? MOLLY: I don't know, Nirosha. I just ask the questions. I'm not... NIROSHA MURUGAN: No, but the information in this case is that the fact that, you know, maybe the wavelength, the—the oscillations of these lights, the fact that they could carry biological information itself, would be meaningful. Because if you look into your brain, between your two brain cells are, you know, things that carry information in from one part of your brain to the other. We call that the white matter or the axons. The white matter, we're starting to see, can carry photons. So maybe each of those bundles of nerves act like a fiber optic cable. And the same fiber optic cable that we see in telecommunication, they carry

24:25 pulses of light that, you know—that we use to carry information. Why can't our brain do that? MOLLY: Hmm. And this could be, like, memories? Is it like signals? NIROSHA MURUGAN: A thought. Why can't a thought be transported in the form of light? And it kind of— you know, for—if we're really thinking far ahead, are these photons involved in trying to help us understand consciousness? MOLLY: Oh!

24:56 MOLLY: There's honestly so much about this world of light inside the body that we don't know yet. Some of the researchers describe this field as risky. Like, it could all add up to nothing, but if they're right, it could change everything—or at least a lot of things. For Nirosha, even if she doesn't know what the purpose of the light is inside the body, like, even if there isn't one, it might have a purpose for us outside the body.

25:33 NIROSHA MURUGAN: What myself and a few other people are doing is the photons are there... MOLLY: Mm-hmm. NIROSHA MURUGAN:... can we use it to discriminate between things? If they're at the very least tied to metabolism, are they photonic biomarkers? MOLLY: Like, can I say I know that's a heart. I know that's a tumor. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Exactly. MOLLY: I know that's a kidney. NIROSHA MURUGAN: That's it. At the very least, can we do that? And so what I'm trying to do is use that for cancer. So for cancer use, we know that cancer have dysfunctional mitochondria or non normal.

26:05 MOLLY: Mm-hmm. NIROSHA MURUGAN: So from there, if—can you imagine if when at the very beginning inception we can pick up that early change as soon as they happen, as soon as they're different from their healthy counterpart? If we can pick up that using photons, that means we can pick up cancer as early as the inception point. We don't need to have an accumulation of molecules and mutations. We don't have to wait that long. MOLLY: Yeah, you need, like, a whole tumor. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah, you need a sizable mass. MOLLY: Yeah. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Basically.

26:33 MOLLY: To say, "Oh hey, your body's growing cancer." NIROSHA MURUGAN: Right. MOLLY: I guess the question then is: Is there a significant difference between the photon release in cancer cells versus other cells? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yes! And we've shown that and we've published that. They have two different light signatures. MOLLY: So with the light coming off cancer, you guys are actually diagnosing cancer earlier? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yes. Yes, with confidence I can say this. We've published papers on this now. MOLLY: Hmm. So... NIROSHA MURUGAN: We can tell whether there is cancer within an animal as early as that we've injected it. So in these experiments, we'll take a rat, and we have injected underneath its skin, melanoma. And on day one, after injection—and we did this in a double-blind way where a grad student has come with detectors to look at animals that were injected versus not injected, you can tell within day one

27:27 that there's a something—there's a cancer there. MOLLY: Wow! So even if it's—like, even if the light was not biologically purposeful, you're thinking maybe it could still be diagnostically useful? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Mm-hmm. MOLLY: So it's like, basically we've walked through—I'm just gonna make you say it again. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. MOLLY: But, you know, you've, like, walked through brain cells that let out photons, tumor cells that let out photons, normal body cells that let out photons. You're saying everybody—every cell that you've looked at is letting off photons? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Absolutely. And there was a paper that was published that showed that you can tell when an animal is alive and dead just by looking at their photon signatures. MOLLY: Oh my God, this is the question I want to ask you. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah?

28:18 MOLLY: Like, when does the light start? And then does it truly go away? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. So in that paper, they—I think they're—the initial study was to just look at these different kinds of detectors when an animal is alive and—and dead. And the photon signatures obviously dissipate when—when the animal dies. What that study didn't look at— which you alluded to—is when. When in that timescale does this signature end? And that would be really cool. When does the glow stop when you're—when you're dead? For example, in, like, hospice care people report this death flash. MOLLY: What's—what's that?

28:56 NIROSHA MURUGAN: I originally heard about this when I went to a consciousness conference, and there was this cardiothoracic surgeon. He would say that, you know, he's seen it or his staff in the OR had seen this, like, very sudden flash of light. And I'm like, you have, like, OR lights everywhere. Like, how—that's where I initially heard it and I, like, looked into it a little bit, and there's hospice nurses that have anecdotally mentioned this. MOLLY: Like a surgeon just saying just for the purpose of surgery where we stop a heart and start a heart, there's like an electric explosion of light?

29:30 NIROSHA MURUGAN: Light. Yeah, yeah, yeah. MOLLY: No! Yeah? NIROSHA MURUGAN: These are reports. Are there any experimental evidence? I'm not sure. There are anesthesiologists... MOLLY: Why would there be a big explosion of light you could suddenly see? NIROSHA MURUGAN: I don't have the scientific evidence for this but... MOLLY: No. Clearly, yeah. But I'm just saying, like, what my—I don't know how to solve that at all. NIROSHA MURUGAN: Well, when—when things die, there is a sudden release of these electrons. They're not being propagated into certain proteins, right? These electrons have nowhere to go. And so when you have high energy photons dissipating, it releases light. So that's my hypothesis.

30:08 MOLLY: Wow! NIROSHA MURUGAN: When the system—yeah, and that goes back to, like, physics. When there's no organization from biology, that energy has to go somewhere. MOLLY: The energy has to go somewhere? So it just is released. It is the fireworks that I have been talking about. NIROSHA MURUGAN: I think so. I think biology—these biomolecules, the membrane, all of these stuff inside of cells help organize that energy into meaningful process. So that's why I was saying way back at the beginning of our conversation is when we reframe our understanding of cells being these energetic bodies, I think the physical dimension makes a lot more sense. MOLLY: Hmm. Do we have any idea of when, like, the light first turns on? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Well, there is a—there is a really cool video that I can send to you where someone showed us the life flash.

31:07 As soon as a sperm enters the egg, there's a huge calcium influx. Have you seen that video? MOLLY: No! NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. MOLLY: Wait, can I see this video? NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. MOLLY: You think it's just around? NIROSHA MURUGAN: You should be able to google it. Type in, I don't know, "Calcium life flash?" MOLLY: I'm getting so excited. "Watch fireworks explode when a human egg is fertilized." All right, I'm hitting play. It's STAT News, so I believe it. MOLLY: What? Whoa! NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. MOLLY: It is like an—it's like a—there's, like, a round egg, and then the sperm is at the edge. And then you just see kind of this explosion come off the surface.

31:58 NIROSHA MURUGAN: A flash, yeah. MOLLY: Wow! I mean, it is really crazy, because literally after we have this conversation I'm going down to South Carolina where my dad is in hospice, like, near the end of his life. And you do have all these questions about just, like, what's happening? What's unfolding? Like, a notion that—I mean, I'm sure I'm not gonna see, like, a flash of light happen. I mean, I'll keep my eyes peeled but, you know, just like the notion of, like, a signal out into the world, like, that's so visual, even if we can't really see it. But, like, light is so meaningful to us, you know, that it could—that, like, it is a signature of—of us and that—that it's like a final salute or something. NIROSHA MURUGAN: You're letting the energy that was patterned into this architecture that we are out and back to be transformed into something else. MOLLY: Yeah, it's like—yeah, it's really pretty.

33:12 NIROSHA MURUGAN: Yeah. Yeah. MOLLY: Oh! MOLLY: Thank you to Nirosha Murugan. You can find her at Wilfred Laurier University in Canada. This episode was produced by Sarah Qari, with help from me. It was fact-checked by Natalie Middleton. For those of you who are gonna check out that life flash video, one thing to note: You're gonna see a big flash of light in the video. That is not the biophotons, that is a fluorescent dye that researchers added to the experiment so they could see it better. But beneath that dye, the thing that it's very much illuminating is a very quiet, gentle light. MOLLY: And I'd like to dedicate this episode to my dad. I did not see a flash of light; I certainly felt one. I'm gonna miss you, Pops. Thanks for always listening. MOLLY: This is Radiolab. We will be back next week.

34:55 LISTENER: Hi, I'm Brigette, and I'm in Chatham Strait in Southest Alaska on a fishing boat, and here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Rebecca Laks, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Anisa Vietze, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, Molly Webster and Jessica Yung. With help from Rebecca Rand. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujol-Mazini and Natalie Middleton.]

35:41 [LISTENER: Hi, this is Celeste calling from Utah. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "The Spark of Life | Radiolab Podcast"?

Molly Webster (Host), Nirosha Murugan (Guest).

What is "The Spark of Life | Radiolab Podcast" about?

The discussion explores the intersection of biology and physics through the lens of applied biophysics, emphasizing how understanding the mechanisms behind living processes, like the body's reactions, can bridge the gap between these two scientific realms. It highlights the significance of interdisciplinary approaches in comprehending life and its interactions with the world.

What is mentioned in this Radiolab episode?

4 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Nirosha Murugan, Alexander Gurwitsch, Wilfred Laurier University, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The Spark of Life | Radiolab Podcast"?

The episode runs 36 min; the transcript is about 5,691 words in 47 timestamped sections.

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