Pioneers of infrared ‘fingerprinting’ publish in Nature

Researchers who pioneered a new type of biological analysis have published an important new paper , opening the door to further advances in their field. Biospectroscopy - which emerged in the mid-1980's - is an excellent method for biological analysis offering an alternative to traditional microscopy for cell analysis and medical diagnosis of conditions from endometriosis to cancer. Unlike the microscope, biospectroscopy methods do not depend on the human eye or subjective interpretation to get a result. Spectral data is passed through a variety of computational algorithms to generate an image or 'fingerprint' based on chemical bond vibrations within the sample. This fingerprint can be read to determine the underlying health status of the analysed sample. But until now there has been no consensus on the precise scientific methods underpinning this process. Researchers publishing in Nature have developed a sensitive and specific protocol for collecting Infrared spectra and images from biological samples.