Chinese scientists have developed a protocol which allows them to detect the proteins present in latent fingerprints. The authors used silver nanoparticles functionalised with antibodies which could interact with relevant proteins in a fingerprint and studied the prints using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Mapping of the obtained SERS signals gave an image indicating the distribution of the proteins in the print.
The authors suggest this technique could be applied to medical diagnostics.
Read this HOT Nanoscale article today:
Detection of protein deposition on latent fingerprints by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy imaging
Lehui Lu, Wei Song, Zhu Mao, Xiaojuan Liu, Zhishi Li and Bing Zhao
Nanoscale, 2012, DOI: 10.1039/C2NR12030E
