Raman Optical Activity of Biological Molecules - Emerging Raman Applications and Techniques in Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Fields - page 171

5.05-5.35 reflecting differences in helical stability between the central region
of helix and the relatively destabilized residues at the N- and C-termini [3, 83].
7.10 Conclusion
One of the most important tasks in biology for the foreseeable future will
be the structural characterization of the wide range of biological molecules
now being identified. While conventional, and particularly atomic resolution,
methods will continue to be exploited for this purpose, ROA has an important
role to play. Although the application of ROA to biological molecules has been
pursued until recently in only a few laboratories, considerable success has al-
ready been achieved in providing new and detailed structural information on
not only proteins but also RNA, viruses and glycoproteins. As shown in this
review, the level of information contained within these spectra varies from
fingerprints unique to sample identity, to qualitative or quantitative measures
of structural competition, to a precise probe of tryptophan indole ring orien-
tation. As new researchers take ROA forward into other areas of structural
biology, with these future advances being made more likely by further de-
velopments in instrumentation or machine learning, we anticipate that ROA
will demonstrate even greater versatility and insight for the analysis of the
structure and behaviour of most, or even all, types of biological molecules.
Acknowledgements
We would like to recognize the important contributions to this work of Dr Lutz
Hecht at the University of Glasgow and the many postdoctoral researchers and
postgraduate students at Glasgow and Manchester. In addition, L.D.B. thanks
both EPSRC and BBSRC for continued support over many years and E.W.B.
thanks EPSRC, RSC and the Wellcome Trust for their support for his lab.
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