Long-Lived Conformation Changes Induced by Electric Impulses in Biopolymers

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.69.4.993
• Publication Date: 2006-05-31T06:35:07Z
• Authors: Eberhard Neumann; Aharon Katchalsky
• Keywords: Polynucleotide; Metastability

Electric impulses are capable of inducing long-lived conformational changes in (metastable) biopolymers. Results experiments with poly(A).2 poly(U) and ribosomal RNA, which known to develop metastabilities, reported. A polarization mechanism is proposed explain the structural transitions observed biopolymers exposed impulses. In accordance this idea, applied electric field (of about 20 kV/cm decaying exponentially, a decay time 10 musec) induces large dipole moments by shifting ionic atmosphere multistranded polynucleotide helices. This shift, turn, causes strand repulsion partial unwinding. The fields used our same order magnitude as those nerve significance impulse regard question biological memory recording briefly discussed.