Poly(vinyl alcohol) and liposomes as a synthetic biodegradable model membrane for probing radiation interactions

Abstract

This work aims to investigate the effect of X-rays on poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) films and studying the ability to be a model of a synthetic cell membrane when compared to liposomes as biological models. The influence of X-ray irradiation on thin films of PVA doped with safranin (SAF) dye and liposomes encapsulated by SAF dye is studied using UV–visible spectrophotometry. These films are exposed to X-ray radiation with accumulated doses range of 10–50 Gy of 140 kVp at a constant dose rate of 2002 μGy/s. The absorption spectra of the PVA/SAF and the liposomes/SAF are measured. The absorption spectra of the PVA/SAF showed a decrease in the absorbance band peak with the increase of the dose with values are similar to those observed with the liposomes/SAF. The dose response function indicates the same radiation sensitivity of both samples. The results indicated that full width at half maximum of SAF/PVA and SAF/liposomes show linear decrease with an increase of dose. The variation in dose response is relatively small and found to be within 3.5% and the variations in a decrease of the absorbance peak are found to be with maximum 5%. These values can indicate that both of SAF/PVA and SAF/liposomes have the same behavior under the applied X-ray dose range. The results viewed that the PVA doped with SAF dye behave similarly as the liposomes doped with SAF dye. PVA may be used as a synthetic model for a cell membrane for probing X-ray-membrane interactions.