Raman Spectroscopy of Spore Samples

We prepared a sample by placing a 1 cm diameter ring of 1 mm thick vacuum grease on a 24 mm $\times$ 60 mm glass coverslip. We added 5 $\mathrm{\mu }$ l of the spore suspension into the ring, after which we sealed it by placing a 23 mm $\times$ 23 mm glass coverslip on top. After the sample was placed in the LTRS instrument, we measured the Raman spectra of the spores using 2 accumulations of 10 seconds. We measured 20 individual spores for each sample (10 measurements in the 600-1400 cm ${}^{-1}$ and 10 in the 1000-1700 cm ${}^{-1}$ range), for 180 measurements in total. There were also triplicate controls at each spectral range. The background spectrum of the spore suspension was also measured and subtracted.