Biomedical applications of X-ray absorption and vibrational spectroscopic microscopies in obtaining structural information from complex systems

Protein crystallography and NMR spectroscopy took decades to emerge as routine techniques in structural biology. X-ray absorption spectroscopy now has reached a similar stage of maturity for obtaining complementary local structural information around metals in metalloproteins. However, the relatively recent emergence of X-ray and vibrational spectroscopic microprobes that build on these techniques has enabled the structural information obtained from the “mature” techniques on isolated biomolecules to be translated into in situ structural information from inhomogeneous complex systems, such as whole cells and tissues.