Continuous wave irradiation at 0.1 terahertz facilitates transmembrane transport of small molecules

Erling Hu; Qi Zhang; Sen Shang; Yinan Jiang; Xiaoyun Lu

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.103966

Continuous wave irradiation at 0.1 terahertz facilitates transmembrane transport of small molecules

iScience. 2022 Feb 22;25(3):103966. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.103966. eCollection 2022 Mar 18.

Authors

Erling Hu¹, Qi Zhang¹, Sen Shang¹, Yinan Jiang¹, Xiaoyun Lu¹

Affiliation

¹ Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of the Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, Shaanxi, China.

Abstract

The bioeffects of terahertz (THz) radiation received growing attention because of its influence on the interactions between biomolecules. Our work aimed to investigate the effects of THz irradiation on cell membrane, especially cell membrane permeability. We found that 0.1 THz irradiation promoted the endocytosis of FM4-64-labeled cells and the inhibition of dynamin attenuated but did not fully abolish the THz promoted endocytosis. Moreover, 0.1 THz irradiation also promoted the transmembrane of the rhodamine, as well as the chemical compounds GDC0941 and H89, evidenced by the confocal microscope observation and the western blotting analysis, respectively. These findings demonstrated 0.1 THz irradiation facilitated the transmembrane transport of small molecules by promoting both the cellular endocytosis and the diffusion process. Our study provided direct evidence that THz could affect the cell membrane permeability, broadened the THz affected cellular physiological processes, and implied its potential application in regulating the cell membrane functions.

Keywords: Membranes; Radiation; Transport phenomena.