The coupling of proteins to a chromophore allows us, in principle, to achieve a high temperature for a short time in a highly confined microvolume. On the one hand this can be used for the study of very rapid thermal denaturation, which may happen in microseconds. On the other hand it is possible to produce very precise damage to special cellular and subcellular structures by heating a microscopic volume. Preliminary optoacoustic experiments were conducted to explore the possibility of detecting denaturation of proteins in such conjugates by their volume change, which is associated with the change of the tertiary structure. As expected, the melanin granules proved to be efficient photon-to-heat converters. Nevertheless, the volume change due to protein denaturation may be too small compared to the thermal expansion of water to allow quantitative evaluations.

Date Published: 1 February 1994
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 2077, Laser Interaction with Hard and Soft Tissue, (1 February 1994); doi: 10.1117/12.168030

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2077:
Laser Interaction with Hard and Soft Tissue
Martin J. C. van Gemert; Rudolf W. Steiner; Lars Othar Svaasand; Hansjoerg Albrecht, Editor(s)