Large-Scale Metabolite Imaging Gallery of Mouse Organ Tissues to Study Spatial Metabolism

Mass
spectrometry imaging (MSI) has revolutionized the study of
tissue metabolism by enabling the visualization of small molecule
metabolites (SMMs) with high spatial resolution. However, comprehensive
SMM imaging databases for different organ tissues are lacking, hindering
our understanding of spatial organ metabolism. To address this resource
gap, we present a large-scale SMM imaging gallery for mouse brain,
kidney, and liver, capturing SMMs spanning eight chemical super classes
and encompassing over 40 metabolic pathways. Manual curation and display
of these imaging data sets unveil spatial patterns of metabolites
that are less documented in the reported organs. Specifically, we
identify 65 SMMs in brain coronal sections and 71 in sagittal tissue
sections, including spatial patterns for neurotransmitters. Furthermore,
we map 98 SMMs in kidneys and 66 SMMs in liver, providing insights
into their amino acid and glutathione metabolism. Our insightful SMM
imaging gallery serves as a critical resource for the spatial metabolism
research community, filling a significant resource gap. This resource
is freely available for download and can be accessed through the BioImage
Archive and METASPACE repositories, providing high-quality annotated
images for potential future computational models and advancing our
understanding of tissue metabolism at the spatial level.