Optical manipulation of proteins in aqueous solution

摘要

Optical trapping of lysozyme, cytochrome c, or myoglobin based on photon pressure generated by focusing 1064 nm laser beam in an aqueous solution was explored. For all the proteins, microparticle formation was observed at the focal point under an optical microscope. Furthermore, the microparticles were identified to the molecular assemblies of the corresponding protein by means of confocal Raman microspectroscopy. For lysozyme, molecular clusters in solution were optically trapped to form the microparticle and it took more than 1 h to produce the microparticle. By contrast, molecular assembling proceeded within 1 min for cytochrome c and myoglobin. Since heme in cytochrome c or myoglobin would have a high polarizability, that would contribute to rapid assembling of the protein. Thus we demonstrated that a focused laser beam was a powerful tool to manipulate protein molecules in solution.