Research progress of biological effects of cell membrane under infrared and terahertz irradiation

Irradiation of terahertz electromagnetic wave including its short-wave band in infrared wave shows broad and important application prospects in biological science due to its noninvasive and nonionizing nature. Cell membrane is an important biological barrier for keeping cell integrity and homeostasis, and it is also the cellular structure that electromagnetic fields act first on in the case of terahertz irradiation. The responses of cell membrane to the electromagnetic fields are the mechanisms for most of the biological effects of terahertz irradiation. First, in this paper are expatiated the application safety of terahertz irradiation and its new application prospects in life medicine, neural regulation and artificial intelligence. Then, systematically described are the researches and developments in the biological effects of cell membrane under terahertz electromagnetic irradiation from the following four aspects: the dielectric response characteristics of phospholipid membrane to terahertz electromagnetic irradiation, the transmembrane transport of ions through membrane ion channel proteins under the irradiation, the transmembrane transport of macromolecules and ions through phospholipid membrane under the irradiation, and the potential applications and role of biological effects of cell membrane under the irradiation. Meanwhile, introduced in this paper are the scientific discoveries that terahertz electromagnetic irradiation is able to activate voltage-gated calcium channels, voltage-gated potassium channels and active transport calcium channels in cell membrane and to create hydrophilic pores on the phospholipid membrane of cell membrane. Finally, the directions of future efforts to study the biological effects of cell membrane under terahertz irradiation are presented.