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Subcellular quantitative imaging of metabolites at the organelle level

Nature Metabolism volume 5, pages 1446–1448 (2023)Cite this article

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Subcellular quantitative analysis has been a long-standing goal of mass spectrometry imaging, but was originally thought to be unattainable. However, recent advances have made organelle-level absolute quantification through mass spectrometry imaging a reality, thanks to the development of nano secondary ion mass spectrometry.

Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) has for decades1 been enabling the investigation of molecular composition and distribution across tissues and complex samples. However, traditional MSI is typically limited to qualitative analysis and micrometre-level spatial resolution, making it difficult to achieve a comprehensive understanding of subcellular processes. In recent years, advances in mass spectrometry technologies and clever approaches that allow absolute quantitative analyses have enabled subcellular-based analyses with extremely high spatial resolution2.

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Fig. 1: Organelle-level analysis at the sub-50 nm level, allowing MSI of cellular organelles, is now routinely possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Gary Siuzdak

  2. Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Gary Siuzdak

  3. Center for Metabolomics, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Gary Siuzdak

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  1. Gary Siuzdak
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Correspondence to Gary Siuzdak.

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Siuzdak, G. Subcellular quantitative imaging of metabolites at the organelle level. Nat Metab 5, 1446–1448 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-023-00882-z

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