Effects of microwave radiation of enzymes.

EFFECTS OF MICROWAVE RADIATION ON ENZYMES*

E. K. Yeargers, J. B. Langley, A. P. Sheppard, and G. K. Huddleston

Biology Department

and Engineering Experiment Station

Georgia Institute of Technology

Atlanta, Georgia 30332

INTRODUCTION

The increasing use of microwave power during the last two decades in a variety of applications has spawned much research and discussion about the safety of microwave power as an energy source, especially with respect to damage to living organisms, notably humans. Western research in the 1950s had apparently defined safe threshold levels based on the human body's ability to dissipate the additional thermal input due to absorption of microwave power. However, Soviet bloc work reported in the last 10 years seemingly deduced statistically significant neurologic and other effects that arise from microwave exposure levels well below the thermally safe threshold. A question still remains about thermal dosimetry, which thus produces the controversy over the existence of so-called nonthermal microwave effects.

At least a portion of the confusion originates from the extreme difficulty in performing reproducible experiments. The variables involved in attempting to accurately measure dosage, to provide a reproducible microwave field, to deal with biologic variables, and to deal with the many psychologic effects in laboratory animals have resulted in a wide variety of unreproducible experiments. Another approach to this same problem would be to identify some factor that significantly affects life processes and to investigate the sensitivity of this factor to microwave energy, which would thus hopefully yield some insight as to what the microwave effects on the entire organism might be. Enzymes provide a particularly convenient subject for such an investigation. They are essential for many life processes; they can be conveniently procured in easy-to-handle forms. Because they are usually present in small quantities in living organisms, damage to a particular enzyme by microwave radiation can cause large-scale perturbations in life processes. In addition, for many enzymes, the biologic assay procedures are quite straightforward, which thus facilitates the data collection process. It is for these reasons, then, that the experiment described below was performed.

BACKGROUND

Enzymes are biologic agents that serve to catalyze specific biologic reactions. Enzymes consist of individual amino acid groups chained together in a twisted helix formation. The helix is held together by relatively weak chemical bonds between the various amino acid groups that comprise the helix. It is these bonds that determine the three-dimensional shape assumed by the helix and therefore the type of reaction that the specific enzyme facilitates.

*Supported by United States Public Health Service Grant 5R01 RL 00412-02.

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