the infrared light on bio-medical science: capabilities and potentialities at sissi-bio@elettra sincrotrone trieste

Over the last few years, the infrared beamline at elettra sincrotrone trieste, sissi, and in ‎particular its chemical and life sciences branch, sissi-bio, upgraded its capabilities both in ‎terms of performances and setups. the last optical configuration has three end-stations ‎equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation, capable of doing spectroscopy, ‎microspectroscopy and nanospectroscopy with conventional sources and infrared ‎synchrotron radiation, from nir to fir. these capabilities allow for a complete study of ‎the samples under analysis, from bulk material to the single monolayer over a wide spectral ‎range and diverse spatial resolutions. ‎the beamline staff has continued to developed ad-hoc setups for allowing biologists ‎and biochemists to perform new cutting-edge science. specifically, over the years special ‎microfluidic devices were realized to allow for experiments with living cells1. these ‎platforms were further engineered to permit measures of hydrated specimens also in ‎vacuum, exploiting few graphene layers as confining material, for correlative x-‎ray/ir/afm/tem analysis of hydrated bio-specimen in graphene liquid cells2,3. fluidic ‎devices were also developed to enhance the limit of detection of conventional infrared ‎spectroscopy of protein monolayers under physiological conditions exploiting plasmonic ‎substrates: we recently proven that minimal conformational variations of the kinase domain ‎‎(kd) of egfr (epidermal growth factor receptor) binding kd inhibitor lapatinib can be ‎monitored by ir-seira under physiological conditions4. finally, thanks to the nano-ftir ‎system, conformational details could be obtained dna 5 and proteins adsorbed on ‎inorganic nanocarriers, opening interesting perspective in biomedical sciences. ‎in this contribution, the sissi-bio activities will be presented, through the ‎aforementioned experiments and other relevant activities in the life sciences field.‎