Costa, C; de Jesus, J; Nikula, C; Murta, T; Grime, G W; Palitsin, V; Dartois, V; Firat, K; Webb, R; Bunch, J; Bailey, M J (2023) A multimodal desorption electrospray ionisation workflow enabling visualisation of lipids and biologically relevant elements in a single tissue section. Metabolites, 13 (2). 262

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Abstract

Co-location of elemental species with host biomolecules such as lipids and metabolites may shed new light on dysregulation of metabolic pathways and how these affect disease pathogeneses. Alkali metals have been the subject of extensive research, are implicated in various neurodegenerative and infectious diseases and are known to disrupt lipid metabolism. Desorption electrospray ionisation (DESI) is a widely used approach for molecular imaging, but previous work has shown that DESI delocalises ions such as potassium (K) and chlorine (Cl), precluding subsequent elemental analysis of the same section of tissue. The solvent typically used for the DESI electrospray is a combination of methanol and water. Here we show that a novel solvent system, (50:50 (%v/v) MeOH:EtOH) does not delocalise elemental species, and thus enables elemental mapping to be performed on the same tissue section post DESI. Benchmarking the MeOH:EtOH electrospray solvent against the widely used MeOH:H2O electrospray solvent revealed that the MeOH:EtOH solvent yielded increased signal-to-noise for selected lipids. The developed multimodal imaging workflow was applied to a lung tissue section containing a tuberculosis granuloma, showcasing its applicability to elementally rich samples displaying defined structural information.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	Nanoscience > Surface and Nanoanalysis
Divisions:	Chemical & Biological Sciences
Identification number/DOI:	10.3390/metabo13020262
Last Modified:	02 May 2023 14:11
URI:	https://eprintspublications.npl.co.uk/id/eprint/9697