ABSTRACT
At the simplest level, all biological systems are composed of water, nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates. Since these partial structures may specifically assemble into the plethora of highly structured and specialized organisms in na ture an understanding of the infrared and Raman spectra of microbial, plant, and animal cells as well as of tissues and body fluids requires a general perception of their composition, major cell types, and chemical structures present. A basic knowledge of cell growth and the differentiation of cells and tissues is required as well. The gross composition of bacterial (prokaryotic), yeast, and mammalian (eukaryotic) cells is given in Table 1.
