Raman and infrared (IR) spectroscopies provide detailed information about biological
constituents such as lipids, proteins, carbohydrates and DNA/RNA, etc. Based on this,
these techniques can be used to differentiate cells and tissues, as well as employed as a
diagnostic tool for detecting post-exposure biochemical alterations in toxicity
assessment due to the induced changes of chemical composition and structure
reflected by their spectral properties. Over the past few decades, Raman and IR
spectroscopies with the development of more sophisticated instruments can provide
high-resolution spectral data from heterogeneous biological samples, which consisting
of large amount of biochemical information, is complex. Therefore, computational
analysis is employed to process and analyse the data for obtaining meaningful
information and getting deeper insight into the wavenumbers-related biochemical
alterations. Carbon-based nanoparticles (CNPs) are most widely used novel
nanomaterials. With their widespread application, concerns emerge on their potential
risk to the health of organism and human, and investigation on their possible toxicity
is urgently required. This thesis is contributing to the toxicity assessment of CNPs by
using spectroscopic techniques coupled with computational analysis. Findings from
our projects indicated that this approach has the capability of detecting the CNPsinduced
biochemical alterations both in vitro and in vivo, which implies that
techniques involved in IR and Raman spectroscopy can provide a rapid and highly
sensitive tool to detect minimal changes at the subcellular level.