[Progress in study of biomolecular damages by Raman spectroscopy]

Raman spectroscopy is an analytical techniques based on Raman scattering, which gives information of molecular vibration and rotation. Raman spectroscopy has been widely employed in the investigations of the structure of biomolacules, because it has many advantages over the common chemical analysis. Raman spectroscopy is non-destructive to the samples. Moreover, it requires simple sample preparation and small sample amount. Raman spectroscopy can be used not only for fast detections of damages of biological macromolecules, such as proteins, nucleic acids and lipids, but also for diagnosis and surgical treatments of cancer. By comparing the Raman spectra of normal tissue and cancer tissue, the differences in the characteristic absorption peaks between the two kinds of tissues can be confirmed, which provides significant information for final diagnosis of cancer and determination of the resection extent of tumor. This paper reviewed the researches on biomolecular damages by Raman spectral inspections. It described the applications of Raman spectral techniques, such as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform Raman and UV resonance Raman spectroscopy, in the detection of protein secondary structures, membrane lipids and DNA damages. A prospect of the development of Raman spectroscopy in the future was given.