Orange carotenoid protein (OCP) is the photoactive protein that is responsible for high light tolerance in cyanobacteria. We studied the kinetics of the OCP photocycle by monitoring changes in its absorption spectrum, intrinsic fluorescence, and fluorescence of the Nile red dye bound to OCP. It was demonstrated that all of these three methods provide the same kinetic parameters of the photocycle, namely, the kinetics of OCP relaxation in darkness was biexponential with a ratio of two components equal to 2:1 independently of temperature. Whereas the changes of the absorption spectrum of OCP characterize the geometry and environment of its chromophore, the intrinsic fluorescence of OCP reveals changes in its tertiary structure, and the fluorescence properties of Nile red indicate the exposure of hydrophobic surface areas of OCP to the solvent following the photocycle. The results of molecular-dynamics studies indicated the presence of two metastable conformations of 3'-hydroxyechinenone, which is consistent with characteristic changes in the Raman spectra. We conclude that rotation of the β-ionylidene ring in the C-terminal domain of OCP could be one of the first conformational rearrangements that occur during photoactivation. The obtained results suggest that the photoactivated form of OCP represents a molten globule-like state that is characterized by increased mobility of tertiary structure elements and solvent accessibility.

The article presents a noninvasive approach to the study of erythrocyte properties by means of a comparative analysis of signals obtained by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and resonance Raman spectroscopy (RS). We report step-by-step the procedure for preparing experimental samples containing erythrocytes in their normal physiological environment in a mixture of colloid solution with silver nanoparticles and the procedure for the optimization of SERS conditions to achieve high signal enhancement without affecting the properties of living erythrocytes. By means of three independent techniques, we demonstrate that under the proposed conditions a colloid solution of silver nanoparticles does not affect the properties of erythrocytes. For the first time to our knowledge, we describe how to use the SERS-RS approach to study two populations of hemoglobin molecules inside an intact living erythrocyte: submembrane and cytosolic hemoglobin (Hb(sm) and Hb(c)). We show that the conformation of Hb(sm) differs from the conformation of Hb(c). This finding has an important application, as the comparative study of Hb(sm) and Hb(c) could be successfully used in biomedical research and diagnostic tests.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) of living cells has rapidly become a powerful trend in biomedical diagnostics. It is a common belief that highly ordered, artificially engineered substrates are the best future decision in this field. This paper, however, describes an alternative successful solution, a new effortless chemical approach to the design of nanostructured silver and heterometallic continuous coatings with a stochastic ''coffee ring'' morphology. The coatings are formed from an ultrasonic mist of aqueous diamminesilver hydroxide, free of reducing agents and nonvolatile pollutants, under mild conditions, at about 200-270 C in air. They consist of 30-100 micrometer wide and 100-400 nm high silver rings composed, in turn, of a porous silver matrix with 10-50 nm silver grains decorating the sponge. This hierarchic structure originates from ultrasonic droplet evaporation, contact-line motion, silver(I) oxide decomposition and evolution of a growing ensemble of silver rings. The fabricated substrates are a remarkable example of a new scalable and low cost material suitable for SERS analyses of living cells. They evoke no hemolysis and reduce erythrocyte lateral mobility due to suitable ''coffee ring'' sizes and a tight contact with the silver nanostructure. A high SERS enhancement, characteristic of pure silver rings, made it possible to record Raman scattering spectra from submembrane hemoglobin in its natural cellular environment inside single living erythrocytes, thus making the substrates promising for various biosensor chips.

Conversion of the rod-like tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) virions into "ball-like particles" by thermal denaturation at 90-98 °C had been described by R.G. Hart in 1956. We have reported recently that spherical particles (SPs) generated by thermal denaturation of TMV at 94-98 °C were highly stable, RNA-free, and water-insoluble. The SPs were uniform in shape but varied widely in size (53-800 nm), which depended on the virus concentration. Here, we describe some structural characteristics of SPs using circular dichroism, fluorescence spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. It was found that the structure of SPs protein differs strongly from that of the native TMV and is characterized by coat protein subunits transition from mainly (about 50%) α-helical structure to a structure with low content of α-helices and a significant fraction of β-sheets. The SPs demonstrate strong reaction with thioflavin T suggesting the formation of amyloid-like structures.

No abstract

Surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a unique technique to study submembrane hemoglobin (Hbsm) in erythrocytes. We report the detailed design of SERS experiments on living erythrocytes to estimate dependence of the enhancemen t factor for main Raman bands of Hbsm on silver nanoparticle (AgNP) properties. We demonstrate that the enhancement factor for ν 4/A1g, ν 10/B1g and A2g Raman bands of Hbsm varies from 105 to 107 under proposed experimental conditions with 473 nm laser excitation. For the first time we show that the enhancement of Raman scattering increases with the increase in the relative amount of small NPs in colloids, with the decrease in AgNP size and with plasmon resonance shift to the shorter wavelength region. Obtained results can be explained by the ability of smaller AgNPs to get deeper into nano‐invaginations of the plasma membrane than larger AgNPs. This shortens the distance between small AgNPs and Hbsm and, consequently, leads to the higher enhancement of Raman scattering of Hbsm. The enhancement of higher wavenumber bands ν 10/B1g and A2g is more sensitive to AgNPs’ size and the relative amount of small AgNPs than the enhancement of the lower wavenumber band ν 4/A1g. This can be used for AgNP‐controlled enhancement of the desired Raman bands and should be taken into account in biomedical SERS experiments. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

No abstract

With the laser interference microscopy (LIM) technique, one can measure phase height of cells—a variable proportional to the cell thickness and the difference in the refractive indices of the cell and the surrounding medium. This makes functional optical cell imaging possible, and estimation of shape, thickness, and area of erythrocytes feasible. In this paper, we studied changes in erythrocyte shape and volume with osmolarity and pH. Obtained from the LIM technique, erythrocyte phase heights and area values, as well as the hematocrit-measured erythrocyte volume, were used to estimate changes in the refractive index with osmolarity and pH. A comparison between the estimated refractive index with the refractive index, calculated in the assumption that it can only depend on the hemoglobin concentration in the cell, indicates that these two estimates are identical in the range of osmolarity (250–1000 mOsm) and pH (4.5–10.0) values. Thus, refractive index changes result exclusively from the changes in hemoglobin concentration with the changes in erythrocyte volume. Under these conditions, it is possible to estimate the amount of hemoglobin in an erythrocyte from its phase height and area, obtained from LIM.