Probing the existence of non-thermal Terahertz radiation induced changes of the protein solution structure

During the last decades discussions were taking place on the existence of global, non-thermal structural changes in biological macromolecules induced by Terahertz (THz) radiation. Despite numerous studies, a clear experimental proof of this effect for biological particles in solution is still missin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2021-11, Vol.11 (1), p.22311-22311, Article 22311
Main Authors: Schroer, Martin A., Schewa, Siawosch, Gruzinov, Andrey Yu, Rönnau, Christian, Lahey-Rudolph, Janine Mia, Blanchet, Clement E., Zickmantel, Till, Song, Young-Hwa, Svergun, Dmitri I., Roessle, Manfred
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/535/1261
631/57/2282
639/766/747
Animals
Bovine serum albumin
Cattle
Humanities and Social Sciences
Irradiation
Macromolecules
Microtubules
multidisciplinary
Protein Conformation
Protein structure
Proteins
Radiation
Scattering, Small Angle
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Serum Albumin, Bovine - chemistry
Swine
Terahertz Radiation
Tubulin - chemistry
X-Ray Diffraction
X-ray scattering
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Summary:During the last decades discussions were taking place on the existence of global, non-thermal structural changes in biological macromolecules induced by Terahertz (THz) radiation. Despite numerous studies, a clear experimental proof of this effect for biological particles in solution is still missing. We developed a setup combining THz-irradiation with small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), which is a sensitive method for detecting the expected structural changes. We investigated in detail protein systems with different shape morphologies (bovine serum albumin, microtubules), which have been proposed to be susceptible to THz-radiation, under variable parameters (THz wavelength, THz power densities up to 6.8 mW/cm 2 , protein concentrations). None of the studied systems and conditions revealed structural changes detectable by SAXS suggesting that the expected non-thermal THz-induced effects do not lead to alterations of the overall structures, which are revealed by scattering from dissolved macromolecules. This leaves us with the conclusion that, if such effects are present, these are either local or outside of the spectrum and power range covered by the present study.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-021-01774-6