Localization of lipidomes and tracking their spatial
changes by
mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) is critical for the mechanism studies
on living process, disease, and therapeutic treatment. However, due
to the strong ion suppression in complex biotissue, the imaging coverage
for lipids with low polarity or low abundances, such as glycerolipids
and sphingolipids, is usually limited. To address this issue, we utilized
a porous graphitic carbon (PGC) material to imprint brain tissue sections
for selective enrichment of neutral lipids with polar phospholipids
removed. Then, the tissue imprint was scanned for desorption by the
ambient liquid extraction MSI system. It was found that on the PGC
surface, hydrophobic interaction dominates in protic solvents, and
polar interaction dominates in aprotic solvents. Accordingly, methanol
was selected as the spray solvent for tissue imprinting, and 75% acetonitrile–methanol
was selected as the desorption solvent for the ambient liquid extraction
MSI system. The results showed that glycerides had high recoveries
after the imprinting–desorption process (recovery ∼
70%) with phospholipids eliminated (recovery < 7%). To increase
the transferring efficiencies of lipids from tissue onto PGC, electrospray
was used for solvent application during imprinting, and the signals
of diglycerides (DGs) in the imprint MSI of brain tissue increased
by 2–3 times as compared to those via air spray. Finally, the
new imprint MSI approach was applied to the imaging of the rat cerebellum
and was compared with direct tissue MSI. The results showed that with
imprint MSI, the coverage of DGs, sphingomyelins (SMs), and ceramides
was enhanced by 4–5-fold (32 vs 6, 4 vs 1, and 5 vs 0). The
ion images showed that with imprint MSI, higher signal intensities
and clearer spatial distribution of DGs and SMs were obtained without
interference from phosphatidylcholine signals compared with tissue
MSI. This new method provides a complementary approach for traditional
MSI to address the issues in imaging poorly ionizable or low-abundance
lipids.