García-Rojas, N.S.; Sierra-Álvarez, C.D.; Ramos-Aboites, H.E.; Moreno-Pedraza, A.; Winkler, R. Identification of Plant Compounds with Mass Spectrometry Imaging (MSI). Metabolites2024, 14, 419.
García-Rojas, N.S.; Sierra-Álvarez, C.D.; Ramos-Aboites, H.E.; Moreno-Pedraza, A.; Winkler, R. Identification of Plant Compounds with Mass Spectrometry Imaging (MSI). Metabolites 2024, 14, 419.
García-Rojas, N.S.; Sierra-Álvarez, C.D.; Ramos-Aboites, H.E.; Moreno-Pedraza, A.; Winkler, R. Identification of Plant Compounds with Mass Spectrometry Imaging (MSI). Metabolites2024, 14, 419.
García-Rojas, N.S.; Sierra-Álvarez, C.D.; Ramos-Aboites, H.E.; Moreno-Pedraza, A.; Winkler, R. Identification of Plant Compounds with Mass Spectrometry Imaging (MSI). Metabolites 2024, 14, 419.
Abstract
The presence and localization of plant metabolites are indicative of physiological processes, e.g., under biotic and abiotic stress conditions. Further, the chemical composition of plant parts is related to their quality as food or for medicinal applications. Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) has become a popular analytical technique for exploring and visualizing the spatial distribution of plant molecules within a tissue. This review provides a summary of mass spectrometry methods used for mapping and identifying
metabolites in plant tissues. We present the benefits and the disadvantages of both vacuum and ambient ionization methods, considering direct and indirect approaches.
Finally, we discuss the current limitations in annotating and identifying molecules and perspectives for future investigations.
Keywords
plant metabolomics; mass spectrometry imaging; compound identification
Subject
Chemistry and Materials Science, Analytical Chemistry
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.