Cell Digestion

[gingi85]

I'm working at a chemistry lab and our collaborators gave us a sample of a smoker's lung cells for us to characterize the carbon materials in the cell. We initially tried Raman spectroscopy, but (apparently) the lung cells have very high background fluorescence and we couldn't see anything.

So now we're trying to seperate the carbon material from the rest of the cell matter. We tried the freeze/thaw method to lyse the cells. But after centrifuging and taking a Raman of the pellet, we still have very high background fluorescence.

Does anyone have or know where I could find a mild cell digestion protocol that would degrade the cell matter without oxidizing the carbon material? A dilute solution of nitric acid?

This would be great help as I have little background in biology ...

[mith]

You could just use detergent to lyse it.

[gingi85]

Lyse the pellet? And then centrifuge? How could I be sure the detergent isn't wrapping the carbon material also?

[JackBean]

what do you mean by carbon material? All organic compounds? If so, than just take whole cell, that's all carbon...

[mith]

What exactly are you trying to separate out?

[sunghoo]

Maybe his trying to seperate non-carbon material (Cancerous)

[JackBean]

cancer is not carbon-based?

[sunghoo]

Nitrogen?

[JackBean]

Isn't all living on Earth based on carbon? Of course nitrogen is presented too.

[sunghoo]

You know, I think the problem in this situation is the fluorescences. Maybe he should filter it using filter or differenct spectroscope.