Mass spectrometric profiling of biological tissues using a highly parallel sample preparation method

ANYL 344

Eric B. Monroe, ebmonroe@uiuc.edu, Stanislav S. Rubakhin, roubakhi@uiuc.edu, and Jonathan V. Sweedler, sweedler@scs.uiuc.edu. Department of Chemistry and the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801
Mass spectrometric (MS) imaging and single cell MS aim to study the chemical composition of biological tissues at cellular and subcellular spatial resolutions with chemical specificity. Developing an understanding of the mechanisms and functioning of morphologically and biochemically heterogeneous nervous systems significantly benefit from MS investigations at high spatial resolutions. While traditional single cell MS allows the measurement of a large amount of signaling molecules in individual neurons, adapting this approach to mammalian systems is hampered by the small size and large numbers of neurons present. Here we present a unique method of sample preparation where a tissue section is adhered an array of solid supports on a stretchable substrate and stretched to divide the tissue into thousands of spatially and chemically isolated pieces. The high throughput MS analysis of biological tissue divided into approximately single cell-sized samples and the probing of spatial heterogeneities in peptide expression in the mammalian brain will be presented utilizing this "stretched sample method."
 

Analytical Approaches: Various Techniques and Applications
1:30 PM-4:00 PM, Thursday, 14 September 2006 Moscone Center -- Room 124, Oral

Sci-Mix
8:00 PM-10:00 PM, Monday, 11 September 2006 Moscone Center -- Hall D, Sci-Mix

Division of Analytical Chemistry

The 232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, September 10-14, 2006