09/30/2026
Scientists are finding that mitochondria may do much more than produce energy. During normal metabolism, chemical reactions inside mitochondria can generate extremely faint particles of light known as biophotons.
These emissions are real but extraordinarily weak — typically far below anything the human eye could detect. They arise largely from oxidative reactions and reactive oxygen species produced during cellular respiration.
In experiments with physically and chemically separated mitochondria, stressing one population altered the respiration of another nearby population. The effect depended partly on light conditions, leading researchers to propose that light-based signaling may be involved.
A recent scientific review goes further, examining evidence that these ultra-weak photons might carry biological information rather than simply being waste products of metabolism. Researchers are investigating whether cells can detect and respond to these emissions.
But the idea is still developing. Scientists have not established that mitochondria routinely use photons as a communication network inside the human body, and describing humans as literal “beings of light” goes beyond what the evidence currently demonstrates.
What we can say is already remarkable: living human cells continuously produce tiny amounts of light as a consequence of their chemistry, and scientists are now investigating whether some of that light has a biological function.
Source: International Review of Neurobiology; Frontiers in Physiology