In Canada 6. A set of hypotheses intended to explain the mechanics of pleomorphic transformation & isopathic regression
Finally, we come to the subject of Enderlein’s attempt to explain the biology of the many incredible phenomena he observed. Remember, Enderlein began his career as a zoologist, interested in the form, biology, and life processes of everything type of living thing. In many ways, it was this broad, inclusive view of the living Earth that positioned him to thinking outside the box, in a way far more integral and holistic than most of his fellow biologists.
But Enderlein, for all his brilliance, was in many ways limited by the level of biological knowledge available in his day. The existence of DNA was known, but its role in the heritablity of biological information was only a fringe hypothesis. Certainly, knowledge of the organization of DNA into genes, the mechanisms of gene expression and ribosomal protein synthesis, and most of the other basics of modern cellular biology were still far in the future. So when Enderlein refers to processes such as the universal urge for unification and the nationalization of multiple colloids into new forms, these terms may be descriptive of what is taking place, but they do not say very much that can be generalized into solid, biological principles as we currently understand them.
Contrary to some claims, however, Enderlein did perform detailed analyzes of the chemical composition and physical structure of the colloids and other pleomorphic forms he studied. He carefully noted the presence or absence of nucleic acids, the distribution of lipids and proteins at different layers of structure, etc. But again, the tools of the time were not sufficient for Enderlein to use this information to form a complete, comprehensive biology of pleomorphism.
Once again, I believe that we need to go back to the primary phenomena of pleomorphic reorganization and isopathic regression, and attempt to interpret them in a more universal way. As I’ve been urging for some time, this does not mean that we should simply deny the phenomena because they don’t fit with mainstream ideas. I have often made the joke that this is like insisting that a radio can’t possibly work, because when you open it up, you don’t find any tiny musicians inside. Or more to the point, like arguing that homeopathy can’t possibly work, because the solutions used are too diluted to contain any more of the original chemical substances. Visions of August Comte and the Theory of Eternal Limitations…
Rather than focusing on Enderlein’s notion that bacteria and fungi can arise from the fusion of “living colloids” and “reserve nutritional substances,” or that isopathic regression is really a form of bacterial sexual reproduction, I’d like to focus a bit on some of the phenomena themselves.
In mid-1800s, the remarkable French biologist and chemist Antoine Béchamp began a series of experiments that raised important questions about the nature and origins of life itself. Basically, Béchamp discovered that all the living organisms he studied, including plants and animals, left behind a colloidal residue after their death. Béchamp found that purified, sterile isolates of these colloid would give rise to living bacteria when added to certain other, non-cellular materials. Identical experiments, using the same materials except for the colloidal solutions never produced bacteria.
From these experiments, which spanned decades of active research, Béchamp came to the conclusion that these colloidal particles, which he called microzymas, were actually the physical basis of life – the fundamental carriers of what philosophers for years had called élan vital. Enderlein was aware of Béchamp’s earlier work, and tried to show that at least some of these microzymas were derived from the fungi Mucor racemosus and Aspergillus niger, as previously discussed. Enderlein used the term endobiont to describe such particles, and his observation of pleomorphic progression, culminating in either bacterial or fungal cells, was therefore completely consistent with Béchamp’s earlier discoveries. Again, it’s unfortunate that given the tools available to them, both Enderlein’s and Béchamp’s theories concerning these events were more descriptive than analytical.
What are the possibilities? First, all of these experiments, and many others like them, may have been contaminated with living materials including fungal or bacterial spores, or other non-standard forms, including cell wall deficient variants that can later revert to traditional morphologies. If so, it’s apparent that the living forms must have somehow depended upon the microzyma/endobiont preparations – since the same experiments, using the same materials, failed to produce living forms when these solutions were omitted. Even this would be a tantalizing outcome, rich with possibilities for important research.
Another possibility is that some microscopic organisms are able to persist for long periods of time (even hundreds of millions of years, in the case of Béchamp’s experiments with seabed chalk) as a “toolkit” of disassembled parts which later recombine to regenerate a living cell. I discuss this possibility in The Theory of Pleomorphic Provolution – Revisiting the Heresy of Spontaneous Generation. This hypothesis, part of a larger model called the Ambimorphic Paradigm, would explain many pleomorphic phenomena. Although this model corresponds closely to the outcome of many experiments, it has yet to be rigorously tested.
A recent paper on Enderlein claims to totally disprove the concept of bacterial cyclogeny, so central to his work. If I understand the author correctly, he makes two major points.
The first is that Enderlein didn’t understand the critical role of DNA in defining the identity of an organism. How, the author asks, can a complex genome appear as a microbe supposedly changes, sometimes within seconds, from something that didn’t already contain it?