Resolving the Complexity of Spatial Lipidomics with MALDI Trapped Ion Mobility Spectrometry

20 May 2020, Version 1
This content is a preprint and has not undergone peer review at the time of posting.

Abstract

Lipids are a structurally diverse class of molecules, with important biological functions including cellular signaling and energy storage. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) imaging mass spectrometry (IMS) allows for visualization of molecules directly from tissue, but has difficulty addressing the structural diversity of the lipidome, owing to the presence of many isobaric and isomeric species that overlap in m/z space. Integrating ion mobility separations aids in mass spectral deconvolution and address lipid complexity. Here we demonstrate that a MALDI quadrupole time-of-flight (QTOF) mass spectrometer with trapped ion mobility spectrometry (TIMS) enables a significant increase in the peak capacity (~207%) during lipid IMS experiments. MALDI-TIMS was also used for separation of lipid isomer standards, including sn-backbone isomers, acyl chain isomers, as well as double bond positional and geometric isomers was also demonstrated. Proof of concept, in situ separation and imaging of lipid isomers with distinct spatial distributions was demonstrated using whole-body mouse pup tissue.

Keywords

lipidomics methods
lipidomics
imaging mass spectrometry
imaging mass spectrometry techniques
TIMS
Trapped ion mobility spectrometry
Trapped Ion Mobility Spectrometry
ion mobility
ion mobility spectroscopy technology
MALDI
matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry

Supplementary materials

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0513 Supplemental JMS
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