Two low-cost digital camera-based platforms for quantitative creatinine analysis in urine.

In clinical analysis creatinine is a routine biomarker for the assessment of renal and muscular dysfunctions. Although several techniques have been proposed for a fast and accurate quantification of creatinine in human serum or urine, most of them require expensive or complex apparatus, advanced sample preparation or skilled operators. To circumvent these issues, we propose two home-made platforms based on a CD Spectroscope (CDS) and Computer Screen Photo-assisted Technique (CSPT) for the rapid assessment of creatinine level in human urine. Both systems display a linear range (r(2) = 0.9967 and 0.9972, respectively) from 160 µmol L(-1) to 1.6 mmol L(-1) for standard creatinine solutions (n = 15) with respective detection limits of 89 µmol L(-1) and 111 µmol L(-1). Good repeatability was observed for intra-day (1.7-2.9%) and inter-day (3.6-6.5%) measurements evaluated on three consecutive days. The performance of CDS and CSPT was also validated in real human urine samples (n = 26) using capillary electrophoresis data as reference. Corresponding Partial Least-Squares (PLS) regression models provided for mean relative errors below 10% in creatinine quantification.

Low-cost equilibrium unfolding of heme proteins using 2 µl samples.

Equilibrium unfolding experiments provide access to protein thermodynamic stability revealing basic aspects of protein structure-function relationships. A limitation of these experiments stands on the availability of large amounts of protein samples. Here we present the use of the NanoDrop for monitoring guanidinium chloride-induced unfolding by Soret absorbance of monomeric heme proteins. Unfolding experiments using 2 µl of reactant are validated by fluorescence and circular dichroism spectroscopy and supported with five heme proteins including neuroglobin, cytochrome b5, and cyanoglobin. This work guarantees 2 orders of magnitude reduction in protein expense. Promising low-cost protein unfolding experiments following other chromophores and high-throughput screenings are discussed.

Quantum-cascade laser-based vibrational circular dichroism.

Vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectra were recorded with a tunable external-cavity quantum-cascade laser (QCL). In comparison with standard thermal light sources in the IR, QCLs provide orders of magnitude more power and are therefore promising for VCD studies in strongly absorbing solvents. The brightness of this novel light source is demonstrated with VCD and IR absorption measurements of a number of compounds, including proline in water.

A novel computational method for comparing vibrational circular dichroism spectra.

A novel method, SimIR/VCD, for comparing experimental and calculated VCD (vibrational circular dichroism) spectra is developed, based on newly defined spectra similarities. With computationally optimized frequency scaling and shifting, a calculated spectrum can be easily identified to match an observed spectrum, which leads to an unbiased molecular chirality assignment. The time-consuming manual band-fitting work is greatly reduced. With (1S)-(-)-alpha-pinene as an example, it demonstrates that the calculated VCD similarity is correlated with VCD spectra matching quality and has enough sensitivity to identify variations in the spectra. The study also compares spectra calculated using different DFT methods and basis sets. Using this method should facilitate the spectra matching, reduce human error and provide a confidence measure in the chiral assignment using VCD spectroscopy.