The vast number of cells in living organisms has different personalities, and the discovery of cells that cause diseases requires accurate and high-speed measurement methods for each cell.Vibration spectroscopy is a method of shining light on a substance and measuring the absorption and scattering of light to analyze molecular vibration information, but since it is light, it does not adversely affect the observation target even if it is a cell.However, conventional vibration spectroscopy has the problem that it takes time to measure.

　The research group worked on speeding up Raman spectroscopy, which is a type of vibration spectroscopy.Raman spectroscopy is a method that measures scattering rather than absorption of light, but this time we used a method called coherent Raman spectroscopy.In this method, a group of molecules is vibrated using laser light, another laser beam is applied to it with a time difference, and the vibration information of the molecule is analyzed by changing the time difference.The key to achieving high-speed performance is that while spectroscopes have traditionally been used for light analysis, the technique of Fourier transform spectroscopy using a photodetector capable of high-speed operation is used.With this technology, vibration spectroscopy, which is more than 20 times faster than the conventional fastest method, can be realized, and it is possible to evaluate 1 cells per second.

　If the high-speed measurement method developed this time is used as a method to quickly and accurately search for rare target cells alive from a huge number of cell populations, minimally invasive screening of stem cells for practical use of regenerative medicine, It is expected to accelerate the detection of rare cancer cells in blood, the highly efficient production of biopharmacy, and the research of highly efficient biofuels using algae cells such as Euglena.