April 2014
Intermediate to advanced
256 pages
7h 42m
English
This chapter introduces two basic examples of direct electrical control of biomolecular conformation, namely, voltage-gated ion channels in excised, surface immobilized, biological membranes, and antibodies of the IgG type, immobilized on an electrode surface. In both cases, the action of an applied electric field results in the modulation of protein conformation mediated by the response of positively charged amino acids (lysine, arginine) moving in response to an electric field. Several concurrent pieces of evidence, coming from a number of different experimental techniques (electrophysiology measurements, EC-AFM, EIS, confocal fluorescence microscopy, electrochemical quartz crystal ...