Articles

Towards clinical in vivo applications of Raman spectroscopy

June 2010

Raman-22_3-F1-s Here, we focus on new trends in Raman spectroscopy to improve in vivo diagnosis. The use of Raman spectroscopy for real-time diagnosis of medical disease without the need for biopsy is among the most exciting and clinically relevant applications; four recent reports are presented. First, an approach to reduce fluorescent background of lung tissue in combination with a biomedical filtered Raman fibre optic probe was introduced in 2009 by Magee et al. Second, a fibre optic probe was developed for the CARS variant of Raman spectroscopy. Third, functional metal nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes were applied to a small animal model to collect Raman spectra non-invasively utilising the surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) effect. Finally, spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) has been presented as another non-invasive Raman-based method to probe deep bone subcutaneously in an animal model.

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Micro-XRF sediment core scanners: important new tools for the environmental and earth sciences

June 2010

Non-destructive, high resolution, sediment core scanners incorporating X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry are now widely used by sub-disciplines in the earth and environmental sciences and have revolutionised the analysis of sediment cores. These powerful instruments allow the cores to be analysed rapidly with virtually no sample preparation. They can record along-core variations for many elements in the Periodic Table from Al to U and detection limits down to a few ppm can be achieved in favourable conditions depending on the acquisition dwell time.

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ZooMS: the collagen barcode and fingerprints

April 2010

Matthew Collins,^a Mike Buckley,^a Helen H. Grundy,^b Jane Thomas-Oates,^a Julie Wilson^a and Nienke van Doorn^a
aBioArCh, Departments of Biology, Archaeology and Chemistry, the University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK
^bThe DEFRA Food and Environmental Research Agency (FERA), Sand Hutton, York YO41 1LZ, UK

This year the International Barcode of Life initiative (IBoL) plans to begin an ambitious programme to barcode the DNA of more than five million specimens representing at least 500,000 species in five years. Molecular barcodes exploit the fact that molecular sequences offer an independent method to identify a sample. Such molecular barcodes have widespread application in systematics, biodiversity, forensics and even food science. Molecular barcodes tend to be based upon DNA, which with the advent of new technologies offers a fast and efficient means of identification. Proteins too have been used in the past for molecular identification, most commonly exploiting the exquisite specificity of antibodies to discriminate targeted proteins. Recently the idea of using protein mass spectrometry to fingerprint samples has been used to target samples in which processing or decay has destroyed the DNA.

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Complementary spectroscopic analyses of varnishes of historical musical instruments

April 2010

Jean-Philippe Echard^a and Loïc Bertrand^b
^aLaboratoire de recherche et de restauration, Musée de la musique, Cité de la musique, 221 avenue Jean Jaurès, 75019 Paris, France. E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
^bIPANEMA, synchrotron SOLEIL, Saint-Aubin, 91192 Gif-sur-Yvette cedex, France

Introduction

For the past two centuries, the nature of the varnishes coating historical instruments has been a much debated subject. Focusing in particular on the varnishes used for coating violins made by the Italian instrument-maker Antonio Stradivari, numerous hypotheses have been raised by instrument-makers, experts, musicians and chemists, without reaching a general understanding of the ancient varnishing techniques. A few years ago, we decided to work on this topic using several complementary approaches for materials characterisation and study of historical sources (ancient varnish recipes, etc.).

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Investigation of mucus using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

February 2010

David Skingsley
Faculty of Sciences, Staffordshire University, College Road, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2DE, UK. E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The growing use of Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy as a tool for quality checking amongst other things foodstuffs, industrial products and pharmaceuticals begs the question of how this technology could be applied to quantifying aspects of the internal environment of living organisms. To do this requires knowledge of the types of exudates and secretions that organisms produce. Usefully, all organisms do this and, as such, the potential to look into the internal environment of living organisms is now being realised. My particular interest is in molluscan mucus as a measure of both species identification and environmental monitoring. This interest has led onto considerations of how monitoring of mucus could be used in other organisms, particularly humans. This article hopes to provide a brief current overview of the use of FT-IR spectroscopy in the investigation of mucus from a variety of organisms.

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