Brillouin light scattering studies of aqueous E. coli cell lysate: Viscoelastic properties of a multimacromolecular solution

Abstract

Brillouin spectroscopy was used to probe the viscoelastic properties of E. coli bacterial cell lysate in aqueous solution at GHz-frequencies over the range -5.0 $^\circ$C $\leq T \leq$ 50.0 $^\circ$C. This work offers a first temperature dependent study on cell lysate by Brillouin light scattering. A single peak was observed in the spectra and attributed to a longitudinal acoustic mode of the solution. The speed of sound, bulk modulus, apparent viscosity and hypersound attenuation were extracted from the frequency shift and FWHM of the spectral peak. This study demonstrate that the behavior of complex multimacromolecular solutions, as shown by \textit{E. coli} lysate, can exhibit viscoelastic properties closely akin to those observed in simple binary aqueous protein solutions. Furthermore, our findings show that by analyzing the raw spectral signature of the Brillouin spectra, it may be possible to identify protein denaturation.