Scientists discovered how detergents break biological membranes, which can help understand their power to kill living organisms that carry viruses, including COVID-19. Dr. Steve Quinn of the University of York reports that they concluded that the methods and tools they created to understand how proteins disrupt cell membranes in Alzheimer's disease could also be used to understand the detergent's general mechanism.
Someone putting soap on their hands
Experiment Conducted to Identify Detergent Mechanism
The scientists examined the detergent Tween-20, a key protective ingredient in many products such as handwashes, for the study. The molecules of Tween-20 detergent are shaped like an ice cream cone. A region at the top of the cone strongly interacts with water, whereas atoms at the bottom repel water and form a pointed tail.
When you wash your hands with soap, an army of detergent molecules surrounds the bacteria and viruses on your skin and scurries towards and bombards them, tails first, squeezing and breaking their membrane envelopes in an attempt to escape the surrounding water.
Ultrasensitive biosensing approaches, including single-vesicle spectroscopy based on fluorescence and energy transfer from membrane-encapsulated molecules, were employed. It investigates interactions between Tween-20 and submicrometer-sized vesicles less than the optical diffraction limit.
Tween-20, even at concentrations below the critical micellar concentration, causes stepwise and phase-dependent structural remodeling events, including permeabilization and swelling, in freely diffusing and surface-tethered vesicles, highlighting the surfactant's significant impact on vesicle conformation and stability before lysis.
To confirm their findings, the researchers used computer simulations to model how the membranes evolved.
They uncovered previously unknown physics governing the process using molecular dynamics simulations, significantly improving the experimental results from various approaches. The interdisciplinarity culture within York's Physics of Life group was truly critical for this work. They find it quite surprising that only a few detergent molecules could cause dramatic shape changes.
Quinn said that knowing the precise molecular mechanisms by which detergents function may aid in developing more effective antiviral agents that can fight disease at its earliest stage. The discovery now opens up an exciting new line of research, allowing them to identify different types of detergent-resistant membrane structures.
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Detergent Composition
According to Phys.org, a detergent is a surfactant or a surfactant mixture that has cleaning properties in dilute solutions. In common usage, detergent refers to alkylbenzenesulfonates, a class of compounds related to soap but less affected by hard water. In most households, detergent refers to laundry detergent or dish detergent rather than hand soap or other cleaning agents. It is typically sold as a powder or concentrated solution. It works because of its It has an amphiphilic nature, which means it is partially hydrophilic (polar) and partially hydrophobic (non-polar). Its dual nature makes it easier to mix hydrophobic compounds (such as oil and grease) with water. Because air is not hydrophilic, detergents also work as foaming agents.
The study was published in ACS Publications.
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