The ideal method for rapid, precise and accurate analyses of the chemical composition of microbial systems, both within biotechnology and for the identification of potentially pathogenic organisms, would have minimum sample preparation, would analyze samples directly, would be rapid, automated, accurate and (at least relatively) inexpensive. With recent developments in analytical instrumentation, these requirements are increasingly being fulfilled by the vibrational spectroscopic methods of Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and dispersive Raman microscopy. Both techniques are extremely rapid, taking seconds rather than minutes to collect a spectrum from a sample and are fully automated. This paper gives an overview of some of the biotechnological and clinical studies that are currently in progress in 'The Aberystwyth Quantitative Biology' and 'Molecular and Spectroscopic Systematics' groups within the Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Date Published: 21 December 1999
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 3853, Environmental Monitoring and Remediation Technologies II, (21 December 1999); doi: 10.1117/12.372851

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3853:
Environmental Monitoring and Remediation Technologies II
Tuan Vo-Dinh; Robert L. Spellicy, Editor(s)