Analysis and differentiation of seminal plasma via polarized SERS spectroscopy

Abstract

Polarized surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy was applied for obtaining biochemical information about the seminal plasma. The effect of different laser polarizations (nonpolarized, linear-polarized, right-handed circularly polarized, and left-handed circularly polarized) on seminal plasma SERS spectroscopy was explored for the first time. The diagnostic performance in differentiating abnormal seminal plasma (n = 37) from normal seminal plasma (n = 24) was evaluated. A combination of principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was employed to develop diagnostic algorithms. Classification results of different laser polarizations demonstrated different diagnostic sensitivities and specificities, among which, left-handed circularly polarized laser excitation showed the best diagnostic result (95.8% sensitivity and 64.9% specificity). Our exploratory study demonstrated that SERS spectroscopy with left-handed circularly polarized laser excitation has the potential for becoming a new diagnostic method in semen-quality assessment.

Keywords:

• SERS
• seminal plasma
• PCA-LDA
• polarized laser excitation
• silver nanoparticles
• biomolecule chirality

Acknowledgment/disclosure

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No 61210016, 61178090, 81101110, and 11104030), Project of Fujian Provincial Department of Education (type B: JB11021) and Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT1115), the Science and Technology Project of Fujian Province (No 2012 J05004), the Project of the Educational Office of Fujian Province (No JA11055), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research International Scientific Exchange Program. The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.