TITLE:
The Characteristics of Biophotonic Activity Induced by Aspartate May Be Related to the Evolution of Species
AUTHORS:
Shuangqiong Tan, Chi Xu, Jiapei Dai
KEYWORDS:
Biophoton, Biophoton Imaging, Aspartate, Glutamate, Brain Slice
JOURNAL NAME:
Natural Science,
Vol.11 No.6,
June
30,
2019
ABSTRACT: Glutamate,
the most abundant excitatory neurotransmitter in the nervous system, can induce
biophotonic activity and transmission in mouse brain slices. As a signaling
molecule, aspartate is not considered to be an independent neurotransmitter
during the long evolution process, which may be just a co-transmitter or neuromodulator.
In the view of structure and physiological similarities of aspartate and
glutamate, as well as some differences between them, we attempted to
investigate whether aspartate could also induce biophotonic activity in mouse
brain slices and its effect characteristics. The ultraweak biophoton imaging
system (UBIS) was used to carry out a real-time observation of biophoton
activity induced by aspartate in mouse brain slices. It was found that the
biophotonic emissions induced by aspartate at different concentrations (12.5
mM, 25 mM and 50 mM) presented concentration-dependent effects and 50 mM
aspartate could obviously induce biophoton activities with the characteristic
changes of initiation, maintenance, washing and reapplication, which were also
different from that induced by 50 mM glutamate as reported before. Considering
the species differences in excitatory neurotransmitters, these findings
indicate that aspartate-induced biophotonic activity may imply the evolutionary
differences in the animal brains.