Towards predicting intracellular radiofrequency radiation effects

PLoS One. 2019 Mar 14;14(3):e0213286. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213286. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Recent experiments have reported an effect of weak radiofrequency magnetic fields in the MHz-range on the concentrations of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in living cells. Since the energy that could possibly be deposited by the radiation is orders of magnitude smaller than the energy of molecular thermal motion, it was suggested that the effect was caused by the interaction of RF magnetic fields with transient radical pairs within the cells, affecting the ROS formation rates through the radical pair mechanism. It is, however, at present not entirely clear how to predict RF magnetic field effects at certain field frequency and intensity in nanoscale biomolecular systems. We suggest a possible recipe for interpreting the radiofrequency effects in cells by presenting a general workflow for calculation of the reactive perturbations inside a cell as a function of RF magnetic field strength and frequency. To justify the workflow, we discuss the effects of radiofrequency magnetic fields on generic spin systems to particularly illustrate how the reactive radicals could be affected by specific parameters of the experiment. We finally argue that the suggested workflow can be used to predict effects of radiofrequency magnetic fields on radical pairs in biological cells, which is specially important for wireless recharging technologies where one has to know of any harmful effects that exposure to such radiation might cause.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cells / radiation effects*
  • Cells, Cultured
  • Electromagnetic Fields / adverse effects*
  • Humans
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Radiation Injuries / etiology*
  • Reactive Oxygen Species / metabolism*

Substances

  • Reactive Oxygen Species

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Lundbeck Foundation (https://www.lundbeckfonden.com/, IAS, CN), the Danish Council for Independent Research (https://ufm.dk/, IAS, CN), and DeiC National HPC Center (SDU) (https://www.deic.dk/en/HPCCenter_SDU). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.