Identification of Molecules by Spectral Imaging

Spectral imaging is a powerful technique which uses the wavelength to identify/quantify the exact location and amount of the molecules. It facilitates the identification of materials and studying their properties through analyzing the way they interact with light. The study of light interaction with elements is called spectroscopy; spectroscopy examines how light behaves in the target and recognizes materials based on their spectral signatures. Spectral signatures can be compared to fingerprints which can be used to identify a person; spectral signatures can be used to identify materials. Therefore, we hypothesize that identifying the exact location and quantity of molecules present in the given cells samples can be done by using a spectral imaging system. In this study, we identify the exact UV-Vis and fluorescence spectra of organic substances including Rhodamine 6G, Doxorubicin and UV-Vis spectra inorganic compounds including silver (Ag), gold (Au) nanoparticles (NPs). After that, we used the Q-TOF LC/MS system to quantify the maximum and minimum detectable concentrations of Rhodamine 6G and Doxorubicin by checking the chemicals spectrum based on the molecular weight. In addition, we used HPLC system to quantify the chemicals basing on their UV spectrum. Forwards, we used spectral imaging system to determine the exact amount and location of the molecules within cells samples. For Rhodamine 6G and doxorubicin, we started with the minimum detectable concentration by Q- TOF and consider it as a maximum limit with spectral imaging. And for NPs we used the maximum concentration for the analysis. Using the spectral imaging we were able to vii detect the exact location of Rhodamine 6G which was in the cytoplasm, Doxorubicin in the nucleoplasm, and NPs in both. Furthermore, spectral imaging was able to detect much lower concentrations of Rhodamine 6G and Doxorubicin by the spectrum in comparison to Q-TOF LC/MS