Studies

SUMMARY: Surfaces and interfaces have unfathomable significance for all life-supporting processes, whether simple water condensation or a complex biomolecule interaction. However, only a few techniques are capable of directly observing behavior of water and organic molecules at the interfaces with a submonolayer sensitivity. SEIRAS or surface enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy is one of them. SEIRAS emerged in the last couple of decades but has only found its application in studies of biological membranes and proteins during the last decade. With this work it was sought to investigate the structural changes in self-assembled monolayers, artificial bilayer lipid membranes, and membrane interaction with the pore-forming toxin melittin in situ using the SEIRAS technique. It was demonstrated, that SEIRAS can be used to study hydrogen bond interactions in several different systems. A valuable insight into the formation and behavior of model lipid membrane systems formed on the gold surface was provided with this work. Finally, SEIRAS setup allowed in situ investigation of pore-forming toxin peptide melittin, confirming its structural changes from unordered to alfa in the first seconds of its interaction with a model membrane.

SUMMARY: