Study On Temperature-EMF Co-effects On Insulin Conformation And Biological Functions By Fluorenscence And Raman Spectroscopy

Over the past decade, a large number of investigations were conducted using animals, cultured rodent and human cells to determine the increased health damage of environmental or occupational exposure to extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields (ELM-EMFs). However, these studies have revealed inconsistent results. The effects of the ELM-EMF have no significant increase of temperature (<0.1℃), which scarcely be explained by thermal effects, so it is called "non-thermal effects" of ELM-EMF.It was shown by our previous experiments in our laboratory that insulin, one of the intercellular molecules, was a reactive site of the bio-effects induced by Pulsed Electric Field (PEF).In our research, the changes of insulin conformation induced by PEF were studied by Fluorescence spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy, which were "non-thermal effects". Results: (1) The effects of PEF could not increase insulin temperature (<0.1℃) significantly, but the variation of surrounding temperature (5℃) could induce the different experimental results. (2)Raman Spectroscopy was used to investigate the structure of insulin treated by temperature-EMF co-effect: the reductions of the S-S band intensity, the skeletal C-C stretch (alpha helix) band intensity at 934cm^-1 and the alpha helix content were observed. Our results demonstrate that the temperature is a considerably important factor in ELM-EMF effects.