Real-time observation of potential conformational changes of proteins during electromagnetic field exposure

A novel experimental setup for the exposure of proteins to uniform electromagnetic fields in the frequency range from 50MHz up to 2GHz is presented. The exposure chamber can be placed in the measurement compartment of an existing spectropolarimeter recording the circular dichroism signal. Therefore, potential conformational changes induced by the electromagnetic fields can be observed. Since the point of observation becomes identical with the potential electromagnetic field interaction site in space and time, the detection of even small effects becomes possible. Furthermore, by examining temperature sensitive proteins like GrpE, thermal and non-thermal effects of electromagnetic fields should be distinguishable due to the different time scale of immediate and thermally induced effects.