Molecular imaging with internal calibrants improves mass accuracy for downstream identification.

What is it about?

Molecular imaging directly from a thin tissue section can be complicated by experimental variables such as surface height changes which affect the mass accuracy of a measurement. Mass accuracy is crucial both to informatics and the ultimate value of the molecular images produced. In essence, you need to know the mass of the compounds you are imaging, because this relates to their identity. By introducing a set of known peptides into each measured spot on a tissue section, it is possible to recalibrate the acquired data and improve mass accuracy by an order of magnitude. This improves experiment quality and makes it possible to make tentative identifications through matching to classical proteomics (e.g. liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry).

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