Masujima Tsutomu
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan.
Anal Sci. 2009 Aug;25(8):953-60. doi: 10.2116/analsci.25.953.
The history from bio-imaging to live single-cell mass spectrometry (MS) is herein reviewed. The limitation of the current bio-imaging method is probing only known molecules, and a method for finding new molecules is needed for cells which, however, show individual behaviors even in the same incubation dish. Single-cell MALDI-TOF/MS has been developed, but it can detect only molecules that can be easily ionized, and not be exhaustive. Recently, the contents of a single cell have been sucked out by a nano-electro spray tip, and directly introduced into MS by nano-spray ionization. Thousands of molecular peaks have been successfully and exhaustively detected, and an extraction method for key molecules was also developed. This new method is now being widely applied to explore site- or state-specific molecules in various aspects of cell dynamisms.
本文回顾了从生物成像到活单细胞质谱（MS）的发展历程。当前生物成像方法的局限性在于只能探测已知分子，对于即使在同一培养皿中也表现出个体行为的细胞，需要一种发现新分子的方法。单细胞基质辅助激光解吸电离飞行时间质谱（MALDI-TOF/MS）已被开发出来，但它只能检测易于电离的分子，且并不全面。最近，通过纳米电喷雾尖端吸出单个细胞的内容物，并通过纳米喷雾电离直接引入质谱仪。已成功全面地检测到数千个分子峰，还开发了一种关键分子的提取方法。这种新方法目前正广泛应用于探索细胞动态各个方面的位点特异性或状态特异性分子。
