My First Paper: Amy Colleran
Posted on: 6 August 2024 by Amy Colleran in August 2024 posts
Amy Colleran is a third year PhD student in the Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Systems Biology. Here Amy discusses her research into detection of the volatile chemical compounds associated with smelly armpits!
Your name and your area of research
My name is Amy Colleran and I am a PhD student in Professor Roy Goodacre’s group (The Laboratory for Bioanalytical Spectroscopy) at the Centre for Metabolomics Research (CMR). My PhD is an iCASE studentship with Unilever and is looking at developing analytical methods, in particular surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), to detect volatile, malodorous thiols, which are chemical compounds associated with unpleasant underarm smells (axillary malodour).
What was the title of your first paper and who was it submitted to?
My paper is titled: “Using surface-enhanced Raman scattering for simultaneous multiplex detection and quantification of thiols associated to axillary malodour” and has been published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, Analyst.
How would you explain what this paper was about to your grandparents?
At some point we all whiff a bit! The armpit (known as the axilla) can be a big culprit. This smell is due to naturally-occurring bacteria using odourless molecules on our skin as food and converting them into things that can stink! These smelly molecules are volatile – hence why we can detect them in our noses - and they are known as volatile organic compounds (or VOCs for short). One group of VOCs are thiols (nice sulphur containing molecules), which are difficult to detect and quantify due to being highly volatile and are present at low concentration. In this paper we developed a technique called surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) to detect them. SERS is based on Raman spectroscopy which uses light from a laser to probe molecules in order to identify their chemical makeup and structure. To enhance the signal produced by these thiols (as they are in low concentrations), we combine Raman with metallic nanoparticles, which help boost the signal. We used this analytical technique in combination with computational methods to simultaneously quantify and detect four unpleasant smelling thiols associated with smelly armpits.
What was the most significant thing for you about that paper?
There were two significant points about this paper. Firstly, this was the first time that three of the thiols were examined using SERS. Secondly, and most importantly, this research is one of a limited number of studies that has performed quantitative multiplex analysis and predict the unknown concentrations of analytes simultaneously in test samples using SERS. The really cool thing here is that someone else made up some test samples containing four thiols and I was able to predict their concentrations.
What advice would you give to others about submitting their first paper?
The first piece of advice I would give would be to start by choosing the figures for your paper. The figures will give you the story to your paper and are the parts people are likely to focus on. Having good figures from the get-go really helps with working out what to write. Furthermore, always see feedback as ways to improve your research.
Read the paper: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/an/d4an00762j