Speaker: Roman Holomb (HUN-REN Wigner RCP SZFI)
Title: Identification of DNA sequences and single point variants detection by Raman spectroscopy
Date: Tuesday, 19 March 2024, 10:00,
Place: KFKI Campus, Bldg. 1, 2nd floor, Conference Room
Abstract:
Raman spectroscopy, based on inelastic scattering of photons can successfully be used to identify molecules by their intrinsic characteristic vibrations. This method is increasingly important in medical sciences, chemical biology, gene engineering, pharmaceutical research and recently in the development of personalized medicine. The quantitative Raman analysis of macromolecules is limited mainly by two factors: (i) the low spontaneous Raman cross-section and (ii) the lack of specificity - the vibrational bands are complex and depend strongly on the molecular geometry and intermolecular interactions. Recently, in biological and medical fields, Raman spectroscopy was successfully combined with tagging of the molecules with specific Raman active functional groups.
Today's click chemistry allows to use the small azide or alkynyl groups as bio-orthogonal tags to prevent the alteration of the biological activity and other native biochemical processes. The main role of this kind of labeling is to obtain high Raman activity and to provide characteristic vibrational band(s) in the so called "silent" spectral region free from molecular contributions. Our investigations showed that the alkyne-tagged reporter molecules can be used to probe the intermolecular interactions in complex macromolecules. Ab initio calculations and experimental Raman studies showed that the changes in the frequency of the alkyne stretching vibration of the reporter molecule provide comprehensive information about particular nucleobase pairing, allowing DNA identification and single point variants detection. In this talk the developed method and its application for Raman detection of gene mutation and viruses will be discussed in detail.
