Nano-FTIR chemical mapping of minerals in biological materials

• Sergiu Amarie,
• Paul Zaslansky,
• Yusuke Kajihara,
• Erika Griesshaber,
• Wolfgang W. Schmahl and
• Fritz Keilmann

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 312–323, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.35

• inorganic particles embedded in organic matrices [15][16][17]. Major tissues of interest include the phosphatic (bone) family of materials, and the carbonatic family as found, e.g., in mollusc shells. Within the phylum Brachiopoda, both strategies of hybrid shell architecture have evolved: Calcium carbonate

• crystals in an organic matrix [18][19][20], and laminates of calcium phosphate nanoparticle reinforced chitin fibers [21][22]. FTIR spectroscopic microscopy is a well-established method and has been extensively used to study bone biominerals at several micrometers spatial resolution [23][24][25][26][27][28

• shown in Figure 5). The spectra in Figure 3b and Figure 3c (and also the extracted averaged spectral profiles in Figure 4) are dominated by a single, sharp resonance, which differs in frequency position for orthorhombic aragonite (855 cm−1) and trigonal calcite (873 cm−1), and thus both calcium

Detection of interaction between biomineralising proteins and calcium carbonate microcrystals

• Hanna Rademaker and
• Malte Launspach

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2011, 2, 222–227, doi:10.3762/bjnano.2.26

• brittle calcium carbonate mineral platelets embedded in a mechanically weak organic layer, nature has created a tough material. For recent reviews dealing with biomineralisation and especially nacre consult [2] and [3]. The fracture resistance of the whole shell and especially nacre, which consists of

• unspecific binding seems unlikely, since lanes A and C (Figure 4) show no difference in intensity. Verification of a specific binding would be most interesting, because this would be evidence that protein–mineral interaction guide polymorph selection and morphology of the calcium carbonate crystals. This

• on the molecular to atomic scale and conducting further experiments. Experimental As we stated several times above, the detection of interaction between biomineralising proteins and calcium carbonate microcrystals in this study is based on a modified approach from [1]. The main differences between