Phosphate groups are undoubtedly one of the most essential components of living organisms. It is nowadays studied for its importance in nucleic acids.  Its role is to interact with the positively charged cations to stabilize the secondary structure. The objective of this project is to establish a biological model study of phosphate metal interaction using Raman spectroscopy.  Throughout the years Raman spectroscopy has been used to determine a change in chemical interaction from the change in vibrational frequency, better known as, Raman shift, and the intensity of the Raman signal.  Two types of interactions are mainly discussed, electrostatic and hydrogen bonding.  Probing these interactions have been proven to be difficult to put in use in nucleic acids.  Therefore, simpler system was employed to mimic the interaction of phosphodiester bonds with metals ions. Consequently, free phosphate solutions and phosphate groups, such as trimethyl phosphate (TMP) were analyzed to provide an understanding to the phosphodiester bonds of complex molecules, such as RNAS. It was concluded that phosphate in acidic systems, showed a Raman shift in the phosphate symmetric stretch around 882 cm-1, towards higher wavenumber.  The opposite results were found were found in the basic and TMP system.  Lastly, it was found that decrease in intensity was attributed to concentration dependency.

Using Raman spectroscopy to demostrate phosphate-metal interaction

246th National Meeting (2013)

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