New tech­nique yields nev­er-before-seen inform­a­tion crit­ic­al to bio­fuels research

The new meth­od opens up new realms of study, ones that might have long-ran­ging implic­a­tions for bio­fuels research and crop genet­ics. ​“The data we’re see­ing are unpre­ced­en­ted,” said Basil Nikolau, the Ames Labor­at­ory fac­ulty sci­ent­ist head­ing up the pro­ject, fun­ded by DOE’s Office of Sci­ence. The laboratory’s team of research­ers has developed a new more highly sens­it­ive mass spec­tro­metry tech­nique to invest­ig­ate meta­bol­ites, the small molecules that are the build­ing blocks for plant bio­lo­gic­al pro­cesses. Young-Jin Lee, a fac­ulty sci­ent­ist in Ames Laboratory’s Chem­ic­al and Bio­lo­gic­al Sci­ences Divi­sion, has suc­cess­fully demon­strated the use of mat­rix-assisted laser depos­ition/ion­iz­a­tion-mass spec­tro­metry, or MALDI-MS, to map the lip­ids in cot­ton­seed in a recent paper pub­lished in The Plant Cell, a premi­er research pub­lic­a­tion in plant sci­ence. The research group’s tech­nique is also fea­tured in a paper pub­lished in a spe­cial issue of The Plant Journ­al, high­light­ing new devel­op­ments in high res­ol­u­tion meas­ure­ments in plant bio­logy. The ima­ging tech­nique can make maps of the loc­a­tions of molecules in plant mater­i­als with res­ol­u­tion of 10 to 50 microns, less than a quarter the size of a human hair. MALDI-MS has been in use in the med­ic­al and phar­ma­ceut­ic­al fields for about the last dec­ade, Lee said. ​“In the med­ic­al field research­ers were using this type of spec­tro­metry to map pro­teins in human can­cers and visu­al­ize the dis­tri­bu­tion of drugs through tis­sues. But in recent years the sci­entif­ic com­munity began to look at MALDI-MS as a pos­sib­il­ity for map­ping meta­bol­ites in plant mater­i­al,” said Lee. Tra­di­tion­al meth­ods in gas chro­ma­to­graphy and mass spec­tro­metry told plant bio­lo­gists the ​“what and how much” of plant meta­bol­ites, but not the ​“where.” ​“Before these advances, in order to ana­lyze plant mater­i­al, bio­lo­gists were forced to crush up tis­sue. We would lose spa­tial inform­a­tion, where these meta­bol­ites were loc­ated in dif­fer­ent types of plant cells,” said Nikolau. ​“The tra­di­tion­al meth­ods provided qual­it­at­ive and quant­it­at­ive ana­lys­is, but it lost all loc­al­iz­a­tion of these small molecules,” said Lee. ​“With this tech­nique we can see the dis­tri­bu­tion of these meta­bol­ites in the plant tis­sue at the single cell level.” In Lee’s study of cot­ton­seeds, done in part­ner­ship with a team of U.S. and Ger­man sci­ent­ists, the tech­nique showed a dis­tri­bu­tion of lip­ids that var­ies with tis­sue func­tion. The know­ledge could yield use­ful inform­a­tion about cot­ton­seed, a crop val­ued as a pos­sible source of bio­fuel and for its oil in the food industry. ​“This inform­a­tion is really so new to sci­ent­ists that we don’t know yet what it means. As a mat­ter of fact, it chal­lenges plant bio­lo­gists at the moment to take hold of that data and integ­rate it into the way they do their sci­ence,” said Nikolau. ​“This data will change the future of how we do research.” Lee said that though there was still much to learn about devel­op­ing pro­ced­ures using MALDI-MS to detect the tiny amounts of mater­i­al in cells, he expects the use of the tech­nique in plant sci­ence to gain wider use. ​“Up until this point, this meth­od has not really been recog­nized by plant sci­ent­ists. But we were able to bring the tech­no­lo­gies of ana­lyt­ic­al chem­istry to the bio­lo­gic­al sci­ence prob­lem of being able to map molecules at the single cell level. There is still a lot to learn about the pro­cess, but this tech­nique is going to blos­som very rap­idly in the next few years.” Nikolau believes the tech­no­logy will be a key to thor­oughly under­stand­ing plant bio­syn­thes­is, and in turn altern­at­ive energy pro­duc­tion. ​“This is really about the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of our chem­ic­al world,” he said. ​“When you’re talk­ing about chem­ic­al energy, you’re talk­ing about car­bon. His­tor­ic­ally, over the last 100 years, it’s been car­bon from pet­ro­leum. If you’re going to make biore­new­able chem­ic­als, the car­bon comes in through pho­to­syn­thes­is, through plants. That pro­cess hap­pens in dis­crete com­part­ments with­in the organ­ism, with­in indi­vidu­al cells. Sci­ence needs to know that highly detailed spa­tial inform­a­tion to take full advant­age of it.” DOE’s Office of Sci­ence is the single largest sup­port­er of basic research in the phys­ic­al sci­ences in the United States, and is work­ing to address some of the most press­ing chal­lenges of our time. The Ames Labor­at­ory is a U.S. Depart­ment of Energy Office of Sci­ence nation­al labor­at­ory oper­ated by Iowa State Uni­ver­sity. The Ames Labor­at­ory cre­ates innov­at­ive mater­i­als, tech­no­lo­gies and energy solu­tions. We use our expert­ise, unique cap­ab­il­it­ies and inter­dis­cip­lin­ary col­lab­or­a­tions to solve glob­al prob­lems. Source: EurekAlert!/innovations report (Laura Millsaps)