Effects and Mechanism of Atmospheric-Pressure Dielectric Barrier Discharge Cold Plasma on Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH) Enzyme

Proteins are carriers of biological functions and the effects of atmospheric-pressure non-thermal plasmas on proteins are important to applications such as sterilization and plasma-induced apoptosis of cancer cells. Herein, we report our detailed investigation of the effects of helium-oxygen non-thermal dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasmas on the inactivation of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) enzyme solutions. Circular dichroism (CD) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) indicate that the loss of activity stems from plasma-induced modification of the secondary molecular structure as well as polymerization of the peptide chains. Raising the treatment intensity leads to a reduced alpha-helix content, increase in the percentage of the beta-sheet regions and random sequence, as well as gradually decreasing LDH activity. However, the structure of the LDH plasma-treated for 300 seconds exhibits a recovery trend after storage for 24 h and its activity also increases slightly. By comparing direct and indirect plasma treatments, plasma-induced LDH inactivation can be attributed to reactive species (RS) in the plasma, especially ones with a long lifetime including hydrogen peroxide, ozone, and nitrate ion which play the major role in the alteration of the macromolecular structure and molecular diameter in lieu of heat, UV radiation, and charged particles.