572 Biochemie
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Sunlight has various effects on human health. Several important metabolic processes are only enabled by sunlight. But longtime sun bathing and extended outdoor activities can cause skin irritation, inflammation or even skin cancer due to high radiation dose. We developed in vitro skin models of different complexity to investigate UV-light associated skin damage. Substances and their phototoxic, sun protective or photo-sensitizing potential can be analyzed to prevent white skin cancer.
Current techniques for chromosome analysis need to be improved for rapid, economical identification of complex chromosomal defects by sensitive and selective visualisation. In this paper, we present a straightforward method for characterising unstained human metaphase chromosomes. Backscatter imaging in a dark-field setup combined with visible and short near-infrared spectroscopy is used to monitor morphological differences in the distribution of the chromosomal fine structure in human metaphase chromosomes. The reasons for the scattering centres in the fine structure are explained. Changes in the scattering centres during preparation of the metaphases are discussed. FDTD simulations are presented to substantiate the experimental findings. We show that local scattering features consisting of underlying spectral modulations of higher frequencies associated with a high variety of densely packed chromatin can be represented by their scatter profiles even on a sub-microscopic level. The result is independent of the chromosome preparation and structure size. This analytical method constitutes a rapid, costeffective and label-free cytogenetic technique which can be used in a standard light microscope.