Raman spectroscopy of erythrocyte membranes: investigation of the molecular conformational state.

Abstract

Cell membranes play a vital role in the functioning of living organisms. Therefore, the search for new and improvement of existing experimental methods for characterizing the structure and properties of the molecules that make up biomembranes is a crucial task.
This work is devoted to the developing of an experimental method based on Raman scattering (RS) for characterizing the conformational states of lipids and proteins that make up the cell membrane, using human erythrocyte membrane purified from hemoglobin.
Raman spectra of hemoglobin-free human red blood cell membranes were measured at several temperatures (from -70C to 25C ) in the range of fingerprint frequencies (600 cm⁻¹ to 1800 cm⁻¹) and CH stretching vibrations (2700 cm⁻¹ to 3200 cm⁻¹).
The coexistence of phospholipids in different phases in multicomponent membranes was studied by monitoring the position of the maximum and line width in the region of 2850 cm-1, corresponding to symmetrical stretching CH2 vibrations.
It was demonstrated that the line with a maximum frequency at 1130 cm-1, corresponding to stretching CC vibrations, can be used to detect the coexistence of phospholipids in different phases in a multicomponent mixture. A model description of the temperature behavior of the conformational states of phospholipids was provided.
This work was supported by Russian Science Foundation (Grant No 25-22-00724).

Speaker

Sergey Vladimirovich Adichtchev
Institute of Automation and Electrometry SB RAS, Novosibirsk
Russia

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