University of Bonn in Germany and Johns Hopkins University Optogenetics Defibrillator and How to end World Hunger

Defibrillators may soon be a thing of the past thanks this time to coherent Red LED light.

University of Bonn in Germany and Johns Hopkins University have developed an Optogenetics defibrillator that can reset a heart arrhythmia as reported in the article “Optical defibrillator shows promise as a less shocking way to reset your heart”, published September 26, 2016 By Kelly Hodgkins, DigitalTrends. 

Arrhythmia is the irregular heartbeat of a human heart caused by damage to the sinoatrial node causing heartbeat to deviate from the normal sequence of electrical impulses. The brain and heart muscles may also trigger off pulses that are too fast, too slow or irregular in nature, resulting in irregular heartbeat.

This causes the heart to not pump blood effectively and can cause lungs, brain and organ damages over time due to pressure differential that damages blood vessels. Typically the human heart in an adult beats between 60 to 100 beats per minutes. Anything above or below that for a prolonged period of time is called an arrhythmia, of which they are two (2) types:

1.      Tachycardia a fast heart beat in adults more than 100 beat per minute

2.      Bradycardia a slow heart beat in adults more than 100 beat per minute

Traditionally, the way to correct this has been to use a standard defibrillator to shock the heart back into the right rhythm. as anyone that plays with electrical equiptment can tell you, this can cause tissue scarring, burns and damage to the heart, due to the sudden boost in electrical activity in the heart and surrounding tissue.

So what did the researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany and Johns Hopkins University discover that was so special? And does it have other practical applications?

University of Bonn in Germany and Johns Hopkins University Optogenetics defibrillator - Translucent humans are on the horizon

Led by Dr. Natalia A. Tayanova, the researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany and Johns Hopkins University tested their Optogenetics defibrillator on genetically engineered mice with light receptors sensitive to blue LED light. When exposed to a one-second pulse of light, the light-responsive proteins were able to gradually slow down the heart’s electrical activity restoring a healthy heartbeat.

The researchers then used MRI scans from a patient with arrhythmia to test out the idea on a human model. They soon discovered that when the used pulses of Red shifted light lasting less than a second to penetrate the heart muscle and stimulate light sensitive muscle tissues in the heart, they could achieve the same thing in the human heart with less energy.

This may come as a surprise, but most of the cell in the human body in most organs such as heart, brain and other organs are sensitive to energy transmitted in the optical spectrum and can absorb energy this way. Shorter wavelengths of light from ultraviolet and below and x-ray and gamma rays can pass through the body, but higher wavelengths in the visible light spectrum cannot pass through the body, as they are mostly absorbed by the skin.

However if humans could genetically re-engineer out Genome to remove congenital diseases as argued in my blog article entitled “Netherland's Plan to create Artificial Wombs, improve invitro-fertilization and eradicate Genetic Diseases”, we could potentially engineer humans  to be translucent.

Humans could theoretically absorb our energy from light. After all, we way we get energy from food actually involves food being converted into electrical pulses through the conversion of glucose to ATP (Adenosine TriPhosphate) to ADP (Adenosine DiiPhosphate), with the loss of an electron as a form of energy. Thus using an optical frequency to stimulate heart muscle using optical frequencies is basically the same process, just that it skipped the use of energy from glucose.

This model shows the potential utility of an optical defibrillator. It also builds on research for the use of LED Lights inside of the body for organ stimulation therapy and the development of optical pacemakers that last a lot long and use less energy.

And yes, it would be cool to genetically modify humans to be translucent or our skin to absorb light like a leaf, eliminating world hunger in a single go.