AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Biomaterial Interfaces Thursday Sessions
       Session BI+AS-ThA

Paper BI+AS-ThA2
Nonlinear Optical Studies of Transmembrane Polypeptide Incorporation into Supported Bilayer Membranes

Thursday, November 16, 2006, 2:20 pm, Room 2014

Session: Biomolecule-Surface Characterization I
Presenter: D. Levy, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Authors: D. Levy, National Institute of Standards and Technology
K.A. Briggman, National Institute of Standards and Technology
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The structure and organization of proteins in biological membranes play critical roles in cellular functions related to recognition and signal transduction. Supported bilayer membranes (SBMs) have been developed as model membrane systems for the characterization of biomolecular interactions at cell surfaces. In the present study, the nonlinear interface-specific technique of vibrational sum-frequency spectroscopy (VSFS) is used to characterize the thermal phase transition for both single and binary component lipid layers in SBMs. The incorporation of alpha-helical transmembrane polypeptides into SBMs has also been characterized by VSFS and infrared spectroscopy to determine the insertion kinetics, structure and orientation of the polypeptides into the various SBMs.