Abstract:
Electromagnetic fields are present everywhere in our environment. They
may produce biological effects which sometimes lead to adverse health effects in
living organisms. Leptospirosis is one of the major health problems worldwide,
caused by Leptospira spp.. The responses of leptospira cells after their exposure to
the electromagnetic fields were observed both experimentally and theoretically.
Experimentally, it was found that their growth, agglutination activity, morphology,
and protein components changed. Crucially, because UVA radiation could cause
leptospiral membrane damage, it could result in the cell death and less agglutination
reactivities. It is known that lipid peroxidation can be generated by UVA radiation
causing cell membrane leakage. Knowing also the fact that the outer membrane of
leptospira is composed of unsaturated lipids, with UVA irradiation at a high enough
dose, it thus could be susceptible to lipid peroxidation. In order to gain a better
understanding of how lipid peroxidation changes the membrane properties, the
computational molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of oxidized lipids in lipid
bilayer was used. The MD results showed that the lipid bilayer properties such as
thickness, area per lipid, membrane order, and water permeability changed as
consequences of the cell membrane leakage. The possible implications and
applications of these works are discussed. It is emphasized that this work is only the
first step in showing the effects of electromagnetic fields on leptospira bacteria.
With further investigations, it may lead to development of new strategies to control
or prevent leptospira in the environment.