Protein Analysis by FT-IR/ATR Spectroscopy

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) is a powerful tool for the study of inorganic and organic materials. In the past years, many efforts have been put forward for the use of FT-IR in living cells and tissues, and as a diagnostic tool to study pathology in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro, due to its peculiar advantages, which include high sensitivity, small volume of samples, fast acquisition time, and broad range of compounds that can be analyzed. In orthopedic field, tissues, cells, and exosomes have been studied for applications in cartilage and osteoarthritis. For this application, FT-IR allows a fingerprint of the analyzed material to be obtained, providing information on the biological molecules that are contained (i.e., proteins, lipids, nucleic acids), in terms of quantity and organization, furnishing important information for studies on tissue pathophysiology, disease progression, and therapeutic evaluation.