Carmichael's Concise Review
Figure 1: A short burst of blue light shines on a specific area (blue circle) of a single HeLa cell, and then the light that the cell emits back is measured (center). The cellular autofluorescence occurs only in the area that was irradiated with blue light (center, right) © Ikeya and Woodward.
To confirm this hypothesis, Ikeya and Woodward
then went on to provide direct evidence that the autofluorescence signal arises from flavins and not other species of molecules. To do this they modified their microscope to allow the fluorescence spectrum of
individual cells to be captured. Tis is technically
challenging due to the very weak signals and rapid photobleaching. A significant finding was that the fluorescence spectra in single HeLa cells was very similar to that of FAD in a buffer at physiological pH, supporting the hypothesis that this, and/or other flavins, is responsible for the cellular response. Subsequent observations led them to conclude with confidence that flavins play the key role in the observed response to a magnetic field. Additional observations showed that fluorescence is not evenly distributed throughout cells, leading Ikeya and Woodward to conclude that the signal arises directly from mitochondria. Tey also
demonstrated that mitochondria moved normally during the experiments indicating that the cells were alive. Tis is the first time that flavins have been observed
in real time responding to a magnetic field in living cells. Te application of this new knowledge to the well-studied, but still unexplained, phenomenon of animal migration will be exciting. Ikeya and Woodward are also interested in whether or not their results may have any significance to the reported effects of very weak environmental electromagnetic fields on causes of disease in humans, specifically childhood leukemia.
References [1] N Ikeya and JR Woodward, Proc Nat Acad Sci 118 (2021) e2018043118.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2018043118
[2] Te author gratefully acknowledges Dr. Jonathan Woodward for reviewing this article.
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