Tissue imaging/mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) allows the researcher to identify within tissues where specific metabolites and/or proteins occur and provides an estimate of approximate relative levels across the tissue sample.

Within MML, we focus primarily on plant tissues, although animal or other samples (e.g., microbial mats or colonies) are analyzed as well.

Phenolics (flavonoids, hydroxycinnamic acids, tannins, etc.) are readily imaged. For other classes of compounds, it depends on the specific compound.

Our instrument within MML is a Waters MALDI-Synapt G2 HDMS, with high resolution TOF-base mass spectrometric analysis coupled to ion mobility spectrometry (IMS).

We have other instruments for MSI in TIPL that have complementary capabilities to the Waters instrument.