REVIEW article
Front. Chem.
Sec. Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry
This article is part of the Research TopicMedicinal and edible TCMs: Extraction and Isolation, Structural Elucidation, Pharmacological Evaluation, Structural Modification, and Quality ControlView all 16 articles
Biophoton Emission Promotes the Modern Scientific Utilization of Medicinal Plants: From Theoretical Integration to Research Applications
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jinan, China
- 2Qingdao University, Qingdao, China
- 3Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, China
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Medicinal plants constitute the primary pharmacological source of Chinese medicine, and their scientific interpretation is crucial for quality standardization and clinical guidance. Paradoxically, the contemporary evaluation model primarily adopts reductionism, inconsistent with the system-oriented holistic view of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). In this review, the commonality between the organismic electromagnetic radiation field and the "qi" of TCM was deeply dissected from five levels. This reveals the fundamental consistency between the biophoton coherence and the holism of TCM. The scientific connotation of Chinese medicinal properties may be the ability and metric to regulate quantum superposition states of biological electromagnetic fields. Therefore, employing biophoton emission (BE)-based methods to investigate the medicinal properties of medicinal plants may provide scientific support that aligns more closely with holism. Biophoton BE technology has shown great potential in quantifying medicinal characteristic parameters: , including the quantization of Chinese medicinal properties, the identification of various processed products, and quality control. Especially in the real-time quality monitoring during the cultivation process of medicinal plants, biophotonic BE characteristics can comprehensively reflect the natural and efficacious properties. This interdisciplinary thinking will help to establish a novel theoretical framework and methodological system to advance the modernization and development of medicinal plants.
Keywords: Biophoton emission, Chinese herb, medicinal plants, Holism, Chinese medicinalproperties, Quality control, Real-time monitoring
Received: 26 Sep 2025; Accepted: 12 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cao, Wang, Du, Li, Wen, Yang, Lu, Yang and Han. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Meina Yang
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