Terahertz, infrared and Raman absorption spectra of tyrosine enantiomers and racemic compound

The application of terahertz (THz)-based techniques in biomolecule study is very promising but still in its infancy. In the present work, we employed THz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) and THz time-domain attenuated total reflection (THz-TD-ATR) spectroscopy to investigate the properties of tyrosine (Tyr) enantiomers (L- and D-Tyr) and racemate (DL-Tyr) in solid state and aqueous solutions, respectively. THz absorption spectra of solid L- and D-Tyr show similar absorption spectra with peaks at 0.95, 1.92, 2.06 and 2.60 THz, which are obviously different from the spectrum of DL-Tyr with peaks at 1.5, 2.15 and 2.40 THz. In contrast, although THz absorption spectra of L-Tyr solution and D-Tyr solution are similar and different from the spectrum of DL-Tyr solution, both of them have no observable peaks. Interestingly, it was found that the solution containing equal amounts of L- and D-Tyr has a similar spectrum as that of DL-Tyr solution, as far as the mass concentrations of the two types of solutions are kept the same. On other hand, solid L-, D- and DL-Tyr were also investigated with infrared spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy, respectively. The results show that the spectra of L- and D-Tyr can be regarded the same but they are slightly different from the spectrum of DL-Tyr. With the aid of principal component analysis (PCA), the difference between L-/D-Tyr and DL-Tyr can be confirmed without any ambiguity. Overall, this work systematically interrogated and evaluated the performance of THz-based techniques in the detection of the chirality of tyrosine.