SERS spectroscopy and multivariate analysis of globulin in human blood

Globulin plays a significant role in body processes, acts as an important marker for disease diagnosis and determines blood type. Moreover, recent reports about the strong association between cancer risk and blood type imply that further studying these relationships may yield new findings on the biological mechanisms of tumorigenesis. In this paper, we propose and evaluate the efficacy of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) for the determination of this important globulin derived from human blood. Comparing globulins from different blood types by utilizing SERS spectroscopy and multivariate analysis, we show that primary structures of globulins from different blood types are similar to each other, but subtle differences in structures which may be vital for determining blood type are still observed. The abilities of globulins from different blood types to approach silver surfaces seem to differ, which also indicates that there are structural differences in blood type related globulins. Furthermore, this method differentiates blood type A from type B, type A from type O, type B from type O, type AB from type A, type AB from type B, and type AB from type O with sensitivities and specificities as follows: (90.0%, 95.0%), (80.0%, 83.9%), (95.0%, 90.3%), (97.3%, 96.7%), (94.6%, 95.5%), (100%, 100%), suggesting a potential feasibility for use in blood type identification. Our method sheds new light on blood type analysis, paves the way for the study of relationships between cancer risk and blood types, and expands the flexibility of SERS for useful applications in the life sciences.