  Molecular specific photonic localization is a sensitive technique to probe
the structural alterations or abnormalities in a cell such as abnormalities due
to alcohol or other drugs. Alcohol consumption during pregnancy by mother, or
fetal alcoholism, is one of the major factors of mental retardation in
children. Fetal alcohol syndrome and alcohol related neurodevelopmental
disorder are awful outcomes of the maternal alcohol consumption linked with
notable cognitive and behavioral defects. Alcohol consumed by the pregnant
mother, being teratogenic, interferes with the fetal health resulting brain
damage and other birth defects. This might affect the brain cells at the very
nanolevel which cannot be predicted by the present histopathological
procedures. We perform quantification of nanoscale spatial structural
alterations in two different spatial molecular components, DNA and histone
molecular mass densities, in brain cell nuclei of fetal alcohol effected (FAE)
pups at postnatal day 60. Confocal images of the brain cells are collected and
the degree of morphological alterations in DNA and histone, in terms of mass
density fluctuations are obtained using the recently developed molecular
specific light or photonic localization analysis technique. The results show an
increase in degree of spatial structural disorder in DNA and a reduced histone
modification. Increase in spatial disorder in DNA may suggest DNA unwinding and
possibly responsible for increase in gene expression. Reduced histone
modification may suggest its release from the DNA and help in the unwinding of
DNA and gene expression. The probable cause for structural disorder as well as
opposite rearrangements for DNA and histone molecules in fetal alcohol effects
is also discussed.
