Join the biological sciences department for a seminar with Dr. Tian (Autumn) Qiu, assistant professor of chemistry at Michigan State University. They will make a presentation titled "Spatial metabolomics and toxicology with mass spectrometry imaging."

The biological heterogeneity of cells and tissues is crucial for their biological functions and responses to environmental exposure in spatial contexts. Elucidating the spatial molecular landscape of heterogeneous biological systems represents a frontier in many areas of biology. However, conventional spatial biology approaches such as microscopy and staining often lack molecular specificity, while chromatography-mass spectrometry (MS)-based -omics methods such as metabolomics can provide comprehensive molecular information but lacks spatial resolution. Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) represents a set of powerful tools to map the spatial distribution of elements and molecules in situ, leveraging both spatial resolution and molecular and elemental specificity. My lab utilizes MSI tools, mostly matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI)-MS, to elucidate the spatial chemical landscape in various biological systems. In this talk, I will focus on three recent developments in my lab. Firstly, I will describe the development of sample preparation workflows to enable both chemical and elemental imaging in a classical model animal in biology, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), using MALDI-MS and laser ablation inductively coupled plasma (LA-ICP)-MS imaging. The second part of the talk will describe our recent development in mapping the spatial distribution of metabolites in mouse gut-lumen systems which reveal intriguing spatial patterns of various metabolites. Lastly, I will focus on our recent work on enabling analysis of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of emerging environmental contaminants, using MALDI-MS coupled with trapped ion mobility spectrometry (TIMS), and demonstrate its application in evaluating PFAS spatial distribution in mouse tissues after exposure.