Paper AS-ThA7
ToF-SIMS Imaging of Bee Brain Tissue – Comparing Lipid Distributions and Varying Sample Preparation Methodologies

Thursday, November 10, 2016, 4:20 pm, Room 101B

Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) with cluster-based primary ion sources enables researchers to elucidate molecular information from complex samples with sub-micron imaging resolution. This technique is becoming more commonly applied to complex biological systems due to its excellent molecular imaging capabilities. The following research details, with chemical specificity, the location of molecules of interest in brain tissue of the common eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens). Microtomy was used to create thin tissue sections of both frozen-hydrated and freeze-dried tissues and the differences in the data sets are reported. A ToF-SIMS instrument with a Bi_n^q+ primary ion source selected for Bi₃⁺⁺ ions is used for analysis. This ion source is shown to produce large molecular ions in excess of 1,000 amu on the tissue samples which yields information from larger biomolecules such as lipids. In this analysis specific attention is paid to the lipid distribution since site-specific chemical imaging of lipids in the brain tissue remains relatively unexplored.