Five hypotheses to examine the nature of magnetic field transduction in biological systems.
This paper postulates five experiments that may be used to characterize the nature of the transduction step in which a magnetic or electric field is converted into a biological signal. Each of the five experiments is formulated as a refutable hypothesis in such a manner that rejection of the hypothesis will provide information about the transduction process and an associated confidence level for evaluating each experiment. The proposed hypotheses are formulated to provide inferences about the mode of interaction (magnetic field or induced electric field transduction), spatial distribution of the detector elements in the biological system, and the timescale of the transductive step.
Engström
S
S
Biomedical Sciences, University of California, Riverside, California. sengstrom@aol.com
Fitzsimmons
R
R
D000465:Algorithms; D055590:Electromagnetic Phenomena; D004594:Electrophysiology; D006801:Humans; D008280:Magnetics; D008954:Models, Biological; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors