Vibrational spectroscopy of viable paired tumorigenic and nontumorigenic cells

Infrared absorption of two pairs of non-tumorigenic and tumorigenic cells suspended in phosphate buffered saline have been measured. Suspensions of cells with several different growth cycle distributions were measured. The effect of both growth cycle and tumorigenity on the infrared absorption spectrum will be presented. For example, changes in absorption in the phosphate absorption region were observed for suspensions with different cell cycle distributions. We will discuss the biochemistry which may cause these changes. We have found that spectra of isolated nuclei allow the DNA spectra to be studied, without the confounding influence of RNA. Therefore, the measurement of isolated nuclei may represent a method of detecting changes in DNA architecture with cell cycle. As part of this exploratory study we have also examined the variation in spectra with cell type and compared epithelial cells with fibroblast cells. Very little change was observed. Similarly we saw very little change in the spectra of tumorigenic and non-tumorigenic cells harvested with similar cell cycle distributions. Changes in the spectra were observed when rapidly growing tumorigenic cells were compared to slowly replicating nontumorigenic cells.