Application of Mapping and Imaging to Algae

Going along with high morphological diversity (cell size ranges from single micrometer up to several hundred micrometers) and environmental situations in the natural habitat, the experimental setup for algae analysis by vibrational spectroscopy has to be adapted to the scientific point of interest in 

The introduction of microspectrosopy by coupling IR and Raman spectroscopic studies with confocal microscopes directed the research focus away from the chemical analysis of macroscopic assemblies (biofilms, whole algae communities) or extracts [138,139] to the point of studies on single individuals [140, 141] and even to the (sub)cellular level of individual cells [142, 143]. The introduction of mapping and imaging techniques enlarged the scientific view to distributional analysis in addition to the classical qualitative and quantitative determination. 

In their review from 2009, Murdock and Wetzel give a comprehensive summary ofIR microspectroscopic research on algae since its early beginning in 1993 [144]. 

As far as these three groups of algae differ significantly in their composition due to immense structural and chemical variation, they can be clearly distinguished by their unique IR spectral features as shown by Murdock and Wetzel [144]. 

These differences in the macromolecular patterns are related to variations in the cell wall composition (cellulose, pectin, silica, peptidoglycan), energy storage molecules (starch, lipids, glycogen), or pigments (carotenoids, chlorophylls, xan-thophylls). 

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