Plasmon-enhanced spectroscopy and imaging inside cells

低灵敏度、快速的光漂白、光降解和缺乏化学信息是许多生物学研究的克星，阻碍了我们对自然现象的理解。通过表面增强荧光（SEF）和表面增强（共振）拉曼散射（SE(R)RS）等增强光谱技术的应用，可以克服这些瓶颈。通过采用特殊设计的表面或适当大小的纳米颗粒，可以实现增强，这些纳米颗粒充当天线，捕捉入射光，并将其汇集到表面附近的分子中。这导致荧光（SEF）和拉曼（SE(R)RS）光谱信号增强。此外，后一种技术还具有分辨和识别混合物中许多不同分子的能力。在该提案中，细胞的关键成分称为微管，它在细胞分裂中起着重要作用，因此是有吸引力的癌症药物靶点，被用作研究的生物学主题。所提出的技术的应用旨在找到与微管相关的重要和神秘问题的答案，并在此过程中证明所提出的技术优于传统的光谱和成像方法。此外，我们将研究一种常见的化疗药物与细胞内微管的相互作用。除了了解作用机制之外，这反过来又可以有效地应用药物剂量方案，减少副作用并降低治疗成本。总的来说，该研究将为增强光谱技术在靶向生物学研究和功能成像中的应用铺平道路，从而建立生物学研究的新范式。

Low sensitivity, fast photo-bleaching, photo-degradation and little chemical information are the bane of many biological studies and hamper our understanding of natural phenomena. Through the application of enhanced-spectroscopy techniques such as surface-enhanced fluorescence (SEF) and surface-enhanced (resonant) Raman scattering (SE(R)RS) these bottlenecks can be overcome. The enhancement can be achieved by employing special designer surfaces or nanoparticles of appropriate size, which act as antennae to trap impinging light and funnel it into molecules near the surface. This results in enhanced spectroscopic signals both in fluorescence (SEF) and Raman (SE(R)RS). Moreover, the latter technique has the power to resolve and identify many different molecules in a mixture. In the proposal, key component of cells called microtubules, which play an important role in cell division and, hence, are attractive cancer drug targets are used as the biological subject of investigation. The application of the proposed techniques seeks to find answers to important and enigmatic questions associated with microtubules and in the process prove the benefits of the proposed techniques over conventional spectroscopy & imaging methods. Further, we will study the interaction of a common chemotherapeutic drug with microtubules inside cells. Besides understanding the mechanism of action this in turn could lead to efficient application of drug dosage regimes, less side effects and reduced costs for therapy. Overall, the proposed research will pave the way for application of enhanced-spectroscopic techniques for targeted biological studies and functional imaging and thus establish a new paradigm in biological research.