title: Epileptic seizures induce structural and functional alterations on brain tissue membranes.
abstract: Epilepsy is characterized by disruption of balance between cerebral excitation and inhibition, leading to recurrent and unprovoked convulsions. Studies are still underway to understand mechanisms lying epileptic seizures with the aim of improving treatment strategies. In this context, the research on brain tissue membranes gains importance for generation of epileptic activities. In order to provide additional information for this field, we have investigated the effects of pentylenetetrazol-induced and audiogenetically susceptible epileptic seizures on structure, content and function of rat brain membrane components using Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The findings have shown that both two types of epileptic seizures stimulate the variations in the molecular organization of membrane lipids, which have potential to influence the structures in connection with functions of membrane proteins. Moreover, less fluid lipid structure and a decline in content of lipids obtained from the ratio of CH3 asym/lipid, CH2 asym/lipid, CO/lipid, and olefinicCH/lipid and the areas of the PO2 symmetric and asymmetric modes were observed. Moreover, based on IR data the changes in the conformation of proteins were predicted by neural network (NN) analysis, and displayed as an increase in random coil despite a decrease in beta sheet. Depending on spectral parameters, we have successfully differentiated treated samples from the control by principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis. In summary, FT-IR spectroscopy may offer promising attempt to identify compositional, structural and functional alterations in brain tissue membranes resulting from epileptic activities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Kocaeli University, 41300 Kocaeli, Turkey; Department of Biological Sciences, Middle East Technical University, 06800 Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: Sevgi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Turker
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Middle East Technical University, 06800 Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: Mete
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Severcan
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, Medical School of Kocaeli University, 41300 Kocaeli, Turkey.
authors.forename: Gul
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ilbay
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Middle East Technical University, 06800 Ankara, Turkey. Electronic address: feride@metu.edu.tr.
authors.forename: Feride
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Severcan
keywords: Audiogenetically susceptible WAG/Rij rat; Brain tissue membrane; FT-IR spectroscopy; Neural network; PCA; PTZ