It is challenging to analyze proteins at low concentrations, especially for those in a mixture of various conformations such as intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). A research team led by Prof. Huang Jinqing, Assistant Professor of Department of Chemistry at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), has developed optical tweezers-coupled Raman spectroscopy that can directly probe the structural features of alpha-synuclein, an IDP closely linked to Parkinson's disease, at the physiological concentration by focusing on individual protein molecules. Read More... 

An illustration showing the optical tweezers-controlled hotspot for the protein structural characterization by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.