Alexander E. Sedov (Russia, Moscow).

Biophotonics prospectives.
(Annotation for the T.Stanciulescu's book. 10.10.2001.)

Life and light are so close that even these words are consonant in English. Some of life-light interactions sensu lato are areas of traditional photobiology. These problems  include: 
1.	Uptake and usage of non-biogenic light by the living bodies (for instance, the photosynthesis). 
2.	Light actions on non-photosynthetic biostructures, such as the animal skin; insect and fungal, and plant cuticulas (the chitinous ones in 1st and 2nd cases), etc. ), so meaningful for evolution of their numerous hosts.
3.	Photoreception of the sunlight, or even maybe moonlight as well, by supraorganism systems as the whole bodies - for instance, by a discrete swamp.
4.	Photon exchange between whole organisms, i.e. the native bioluminescence of some bacteria, fungi, peridinean, corals and jelly-fishes (as some medusae as some ctenophorans), worms, octopods, crustaceans, scorpions, insects, fishes, and some other inhabitants of the sea depths, caves, and exotic terrestrial nighty biotopes. Their lights are very intensive ones and, as a sum, do cover all the visible spectrum. The appropriate photoproducing systems, their sets of proteins and genes which do encode them, the photoproducing and photoreceiving organs, are of highest semantical value, so in all these cases both morphological and functional and behavioral evolution is highly dependent on them. Now, some of these genes are cloned, sequenced, and in some cases, expressed heterologically (for example, the jelly-fish's gene for green fluorescent protein was placed into human cancer cells, and then these cells were transposed to the nude mice to see the development and treatmeint of transplanted cancer in vivo - both to kill and to heal).
	Some of these genes, that illuminate the cells in all the visible spectrum, are 
	discovered nowadays, cloned, and some of them are already expressed in the cells 
	 of very evolutionarily distant organisms.  in Russia by Yuri Labass et al.. So, the 
	 broad set for simultaneous high-resolution vital staining with near-zero artifact 
	influences is on display. Surely it’s the great present for genomics, biochemistry, 
	cellular and developmental biology, physiology, local ecology, and so on. Now, we 
	can remember the A.Gurvitch’s concept of developmental mitogenetic fields, and 
	not only remember but, moreover, check it experimentally, are they whether 
	cognitive metaphor or set of strict biophysical phenomena. 
5.	Inter- and/or even intracellular communications inside the organism by means of some native fluorescent proteins. This ability of subcellular macromolecular complexes, or even of single specific proteins, to communicate each other some information (i.e. "to talk") by means of photons, seems to be probable. So, we know already hundreds of specific membrane proteins that specifically recognize and accept mediators that range in sizes and meanings from specific ions up to long neuropeptides. These receptor patterns and shapes literally beg to be embodied in architecture (as I published last year in the International Conference "Future Architect: Land, Mind, Society" that took place in Barcelona last year): many of them do resemble our phototelescopes, so maybe they uptake and interpret endogenous fotons as well.
6.	The existence of specific biophotons, that differ from the abiogenic ones, seems to me highly doubtful. These ideas, however, also do deserve to be experimentally checked as well. 
  All of that, mostly increasing top-to-bottom of this schedule, is the real work field for biosemiotics. So, biophotonics is more than the part of photobiology: their sets of phenomena and problems do overlap only partially, since traditional photobiology lacks any problems of sign-interpreting informational biosystems. We must reveal, study, and understand various light sign interpreters - in all the structural levels of biosystems, whatsoever physical structures they consist. Moreover, it can become under study trictly only from now on - by the experimental multilevel reframing of biosystems, which I told and published about at the ISI Conference at Imatra (Finland) at June 12-20, 2000. 
   There, I met the author of this book, the brilliant Romanian thinker-biosemiotist  Traian Stanciulescu, and was highly inspired not only by his brilliant lecture on these problems, but also by his high spirit and deep cordiality. I hope that his views on biosemiotic photobiology, i.e. biophotonics, will inspire every reader as well. 
 God bless you, Traian!   
 
          Alexander E.Sedov
            Doctor of Biology (both Russian scientific degrees),
            Leading Researcher in the Institute of History of Science & Technology of  
            the Russian Academy of Sciences (IHST RAS),
            Head of the Department of Biology in Moscow Institute of Open 
            Education (in Russian transliteration - MIOO, f.MIPKRO),
            Member of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS).