ENST: How Cells Use Electricity

“Welcome to the Electric Cell” at
Evolution News and Science Today
turns on the lights of electrical
wonders at work in the cell

Welcome to the Electric Cell
by David F. Coppedge
Evolution News & Science Today, May 31, 2019

Neurons have well-known quasi-electrical processes. Specialized membrane channels admit positively-charged potassium ions and sodium ions into the cytoplasm, and pump them out, creating pulses that travel down axons or dendrites. Synapses convert the pulses to chemical signals, and back again. Neurologists speak of “action potentials” as these ion flows show up as electrical spikes in the inner ear, the olfactory organs, and other parts of the central nervous system. Other examples include the engines ATP synthase and bacterial flagella, which rotate by means of motive forces produced by protons or sodium ions. 

These processes, while employing charged particles, look more like chemistry than electricity. Now, however, some scientists are describing real electrical currents passing through “wires” of a kind. 

The Electric Cell

Our modern electrical grids transmit more than power. They also transmit information. The words and pictures on our screens come via electromagnetic (EM) pulses that become the 1’s and 0’s computers recognize. Some pulses, also called solitons, come through the air in wireless transmissions of EM waves via cell towers, satellites or WiFi routers in our homes. Other informational pulses pass through coaxial cables or power lines (“broadband over power lines,” or BPL). Are cells wired for electrical transmission of information? Indeed, they are. A paper by B. R. Frieden and R. A. Gatenby in Nature Scientific Reports says this possibility is backed up by evidence….

Click here to continue reading.