Compositional Mapping of the Surface and Interior of Mammalian Cells at Submicrometer Resolution

Published

January 26, 2011

Author(s)

Christopher Szakal, Kedar Narayan, Jing Fu, Jonathan A. Lefman, Sriram Subramaniam

Abstract

We present progress towards imaging of chemical species within intact mammalian cells using secondary ion mass spectrometry, with simultaneous mapping of subcellular elemental and molecular species along with intrinsic membrane-specific cellular markers. Results from imaging of both the cell surface and cell interior exposed by site-specific focused ion beam milling demonstrate that in-plane resolutions of approximately 400 nm can be achieved. The results from mapping cell surface phosphatidylcholine and several other molecular ions present in the cells establish that spatially-resolved chemical signatures of individual cells can be derived from novel multivariate analysis and classification of the molecular images obtained at different m/z ratios. The methods we present here for specimen preparation and chemical imaging of cell interiors provide the foundation for obtaining 3D molecular maps of unstained mammalian cells, with particular relevance for probing the subcellular distribution of small molecules, such as drugs and metabolites.

Citation

Analytical Chemistry

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1021/ac1030607

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Keywords

single cell imaging, hela cells, imaging mass spectrometry, SIMS, submicrometer, FIB

Citation

Szakal, C. , Narayan, K. , Fu, J. , Lefman, J. and Subramaniam, S. (2011), Compositional Mapping of the Surface and Interior of Mammalian Cells at Submicrometer Resolution, Analytical Chemistry, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/ac1030607, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=906388 (Accessed September 16, 2024)