Many plant secondary metabolites are widely utilized by humanity due to their highly valued medicinal benefits.  Some are efficacious in treating various diseases (e.g., cancer, pain, malaria, glaucoma), as well as functioning as chemical scaffold leads for drug discovery efforts. Medicinals are often structurally complex, present in minute quantity, and cannot be synthesized economically.  Yet frequently little is known about the cell types where they are biosynthesized. Accordingly, identification of the highly specialized cell types (‘phytochemical factories’) that produce these medicinals would assist in establishing unknown biochemical pathway steps (intermediates, enzymes, genes).  We describe herein the use high spatial resolution MALDI-TOF tissue metabolite imaging mass spectrometry to identify and characterize the specialized cells/tissues accumulating important plant medicinals.  This enabling technology allows us to now rapidly identify their spatial (cell types involved) and temporal distributions, as well as the range of metabolites that co-exist in these specific cell types.<br/>

High resolution MALDI imaging mass spectrometry: A molecular imaging of natural products <i>in planta</i>

249th National Meeting (2015)

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High resolution MALDI imaging mass spectrometry: A molecular imaging of natural products in planta