Funmi - Week 5

This week, I once again focused on my research project in Dr. Boskey's lab using FTIR to characterize the structure of the bone from two different types of mice. FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) is a technique that focuses a beam of infrared light onto a specimen, thus creating vibrations within atoms in the material. Some of the infrared light is absorbed while some is transmitted. By transforming the frequency of the vibrations as a function of the transmitted (or absorbed) light, one can get an infrared fingerprint of each specimen. Specifically for cortical bone, the lab is interested in the amide peaks (indicative of collagen structure), as well as the mineral peak (indicative of the hydroxyapatite structure). Learning this technique has been very interesting, and the fact that one can obtain not only qualitative but quantitative data about the organic structure of bone is quite educational. Next week, I will give a short presentation on what I have learned using FTIR.