Fröhlich systems in cellular physiology.
Electromagnetic fields are usually absent in the picture of processes             taking place in living cells which is dominated by biochemistry, molecular genetics             and microscopic morphology. Yet experimental and theoretical studies suggest             that this omission is not justified. At the end of 1960's H. Fröhlich elaborated             a semi-phenomenological model of polar oscillating units that are metabolically             driven, exchange energy with the cell's internal heat reservoir, and store part of             the energy in excited vibrational modes in such way, that mode with the lowest             frequency becomes highly excited, while the higher-order modes remain near             thermal equilibrium. This affords energy-hungry chemical reactions to take place             while the rest of the cell is not exposed to heat stress. At present, part of the             cytoskeleton - microtubules - are deemed to fulfil the role of oscillating units. The             paper provides an introduction to the Fröhlich ideas for readers with background in             medicine and biology in that it avoids mathematical formulas and relies on figures to             convey information about the basic properties of the model. The essential features             of the Fröhlich model - most notably the energy condensation - are demonstrated             on ensemble encompassing three coupled vibration modes that can be exactly             described using original diagrammatic method.
Institute of Photonics and Electronics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, Czech Republic. srobar@ufe.cz
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D002468:Cell Physiological Phenomena; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D008954:Models, Biological