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Spectroscopy
Volume 24 (2010), Issue 1-2, Pages 51-54
doi:10.3233/SPE-2010-0403
Data processing in FTIR imaging of cells: Towards protein secondary structure imaging
1Laboratory for the Structure and Function of Biological Membranes, Center for Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
2Laboratory for the Structure and Function of Biological Membranes, Center for Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Campus Plaine CP206/02, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Bld du Triomphe 2, Brussels B1050, Belgium
Copyright © 2010 Hindawi Publishing Corporation. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Focal plane arrays provide a rapid method for infrared imaging of cells and tissues. Beside statistical analyses designed to classify image features, insight into the structure of the molecules present in the sample can be obtained. The paper presents a simple way to retrieve complete information on protein secondary structure from the thousands of spectra obtained by imaging. Human PC-3 prostate cancer cells were shown here to present cell-to-cell variations in protein secondary structure which might be related to the cell cycle. Intracellular variations are small but intercellular variations can be quite significant. This observation could yield unanticipated insight in cell population analysis. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the robustness of secondary structure determination on individual pixels at a sub-cellular scale.