Biophysics
Can networks of genes be stimulated using resonance? Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute are investigating whether the protein p53, which activates a range of different genes, can be induced to communicate with the body’s cells “on command.” Perhaps resonance is the key to stimulating the body toward a new form of self-healing?
Cells are constantly dividing. They do so when the body grows, and they do so to repair damage and generally renew the body. It is a process that must be controlled, because uncontrolled cell division means cancer. It is in the regulation of cell division that the protein P53 comes into play.
P53 is a so‑called gatekeeper protein. It signals what should happen to a cell that, for example, has sustained damage to its DNA. The damage may be repairable, or the cell may need to “commit suicide,” because it would be very unfortunate if a cell with DNA damage divided, causing the damage to multiply and spread in the body.
For this reason, the protein P53 is a central protein to examine when working with cancer prevention. It is commonly assumed that if P53 does not function properly, the risk of developing cancer is much higher than if the protein works as it is supposed to work. Cancer types are incredibly diverse, but at least 50% of them share the feature that the P53 protein has a mutation, so the mechanism does not function correctly.
There are many, many genes to monitor—how does P53 manage that?
P53 is a so‑called transcription factor—this means that it stimulates between 500 and 1,000 genes, which is a very large number, about 5% of the entire human genome. Researchers therefore asked how P53 “chooses” which genes to stimulate. With so many genes to regulate, signals must necessarily be directed at individual genes or groups of genes at a time.
Resonance as a signal – and a fortunate connection to Harvard
Resonance is a phenomenon found throughout nature, and it has long been known that if there is damage to DNA, P53 begins to “oscillate” with a resonance period of 5 hours. The researchers therefore built on their theoretical knowledge of resonance in genetic networks: it is a fundamental characteristic that when they are set into oscillation, they return to an equilibrium state at a specific resonance frequency.
This exact experiment—stimulating P53 with external frequencies—had in fact been carried out four years earlier by postdoctoral researcher Alba Jimenez at Harvard University, but no one really knew what to make of the result. The finding was that if P53 is stimulated with different frequencies, very different outcomes occur. If P53 is stimulated at its natural frequency, a strong signal is returned—there is a significantly increased amplitude—whereas using other frequencies produces only a very limited response.
This points to a basic principle of physics that appears to be applicable to biological-genetic systems: Resonance seems to be usable as a way to “communicate” with biological systems.
This opens up the important question of whether it might be possible to strengthen the body’s own systems of self-healing. If we want to achieve a specific effect in the genetic system and we know the frequencies that can stimulate the right genes, could we then achieve, for example, healing of various types of damage simply by very precise stimulation?
The present study does not yet demonstrate all of these outcomes—for example, resonance has not yet been shown to have a direct effect on genetic-biological systems. However, through this research linking a fundamental physical phenomenon with biological systems, the researchers have pointed the way toward an entirely new way of understanding and studying the field.
Cell
Observational study
Cells
Genetic resonance in the p53 signaling network
18-Mar-2026