Abstract
Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) is an effective coherent detection technique for deeply understanding the structures and functions of biomolecules. However, generally not full information in the whole THz range can be obtained due to the limited detection bandwidth (usually less than 5 THz) of the traditional THz-TDS systems. In this paper, effective THz absorption spectra in 0.5–10 THz range of five typical nucleobases of DNA/RNA are characterized with a super broadband THz detection technique, called the air-biased- coherent-detection (THz-ABCD) technique. Few unexpected characteristic absorption peaks appeared in the low-frequency region and meanwhile a series of anticipated characteristic absorption peaks are found in the high-frequency region. The fingerprint spectra of these nucleobases are helpful for further analysis on the vibration and twisting behavior of hydrogen bonds, van der Waals and electrostatic forces etc. between and within DNA/RNA biomolecules.
Highlights
The spectra of biomolecules in the different electromagnetic bands contain abundant structural and functional information, which is meaningful and helpful for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the structures and functions of target objects
Experimental measurement of the time-domain transmitted waveforms of the reference and the nucleobases with different mass were performed with our THz-ABCD system
Our results indicate that THz-ABCD technique is superior to the conventional THz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) in terms of bandwidth, and it can provide more information about molecular vibrations and twists, which is helpful for identification of substances and analysis of biomolecules’ structures
Summary
The spectra of biomolecules in the different electromagnetic bands contain abundant structural and functional information, which is meaningful and helpful for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the structures and functions of target objects. Low frequency stretching and bending vibrations between and within molecules, phonon vibrations of lattices and stretching and torsion vibrations of hydrogen bonds pertain to the primary reasons of generating high-level structure and motion. Van der Waals forces, and skeletal vibrations between or within nucleic acids, proteins, sugars and lipids that reflect the biological functions of biological molecules fall in the terahertz (THz) band range [1,2,3]. The characteristic absorption peaks of biomolecules related to the bending vibrations of functional groups in biological macromolecules have been proved theoretically to be widely distributed in the whole THz band [11]
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