Plant Tissue MALDI Imaging Mass Spectrometry
MALDI (Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization) Imaging Mass Spectrometry is a powerful approach to understand and unravel the spatial distribution of metabolites in a complex biological system. The outstanding merit of using this approach is capturing a snapshot of chemical blueprint in a single sample showing their composition, distribution and density in situ without the aid of radiolabeling, fluorescent tagging or antibodies. In plants, MALDI imaging mass spectrometry will enable to identify specific cell types (“phytochemical machineries”) involved in secondary metabolite biosynthesis, which subsequently would assist in establishing unknown biochemical steps and processes at the genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics level.