Comparison study of mouse brain tissue by using ToF-SIMS within static limits and hybrid SIMS beyond static limits (dynamic mode)

In the study of degenerative brain diseases, changes in lipids, the main component of neurons, are particularly important because they are used as indicators of pathological changes. One method for the sensitive measurement of biomolecules, especially lipids, is time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) using pulsed argon cluster ions. In this study, biomolecules including various lipids present in normal mouse brain tissue were measured using ToF-SIMS equipped with pulsed argon cluster primary ions. Based on the ToF-SIMS measurement results, hybrid SIMS (OrbiSIMS), which is a ToF-SIMS system with the addition of an orbitrap mass analyzer, was used to directly identify the biomolecules by the region in the real tissue samples. For this, the results of ToF-SIMS, which measured the tissue samples from a single mouse brain within static limits, were compared with those from OrbiSIMS measured beyond the static limits in terms of the differences in molecular profiling. From this analysis, two types of positive and negative ions were selected for identification, with the OrbiSIMS MS/MS results indicating that the positive ions were glycerophosphocholine and the negative ions were glycerophosphoinositol and sulfatide, a sphingolipid. Then, to confirm the identification of the molecular candidates, lipids were extracted from mirror image tissue samples, and LC-MS/MS also using an orbitrap mass analyzer was performed. As a result, the direct identification of molecular candidate groups distributed in particular regions of the tissue samples via OrbiSIMS was found to be consistent with the identification results by LC-MS/MS for extracted samples. (c) 2023 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

In the study of degenerative brain diseases, changes in lipids, which are the main component of neurons, are crucial for indicating pathological changes. The researchers used ToF-SIMS with pulsed argon cluster ions to measure biomolecules, including lipids, in normal mouse brain tissue. They used OrbiSIMS, a hybrid SIMS system with an orbitrap mass analyzer, to identify the biomolecules in real tissue samples. The identification results by OrbiSIMS were confirmed by LC-MS/MS analysis of lipids extracted from mirror image tissue samples.