Dynamic laser light scattering studies on the heat aggregation behavior of phycobilisomes (PBS), ferritin, insulin, and immunoglobulin (IgG) in dilute aqueous solutions has been reported. Except for PBS, results are reported for heat aggregation trends in these proteins for three different pH environments (4.0, 7.5, 9.1). For PBS, studies were performed only in the neutral buffer medium (pH 7.5). The experiments were performed in the very dilute concentration regime (between 0.23 and 1.8 gL-1). For all these samples heat aggregation and dissociation trends were found to be linear with temperature. Upon temperature reversal (self-cooling), hysteresis-like behavior observed in insulin was found to be predominantly large at pH 7.5. PBS, ferritin, and IgG showed no such behavior at any of three pH values, and retraced their path of aggregation while dissociating on temperature reversal. Heat aggregation and dissociation processes in ferritin were found to be independent of pH. The IgG samples showed smooth aggregation tendency only up to 35 degrees C in the buffer media pH 4.0 and 9.1, whereas for pH 7.0 the same could be observed until 60 degrees C. Low polydispersity in the correlation spectra was observed in case of all these samples.
An instrument has been developed for determining intensity correlation functions of a light beam with high accuracy. It is based on digital storage of the arrival times of up to six photoelectric pulses following a start pulse. The times are stored in the memory of a multichannel analyzer, such that the histogram of arrival times is a direct measure of the form of the intensity correlation function. The correlator allows data to be accumulated at a much higher rate than in a time-to-amplitude converter.
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