Data from: In situ lipidomics of Staphylococcus aureus osteomyelitis using imaging mass spectrometry

Osteomyelitis occurs when Staphylococcus aureus invades the bone
microenvironment, resulting in a bone marrow abscess with a spatially
defined architecture of cells and biomolecules. Imaging mass spectrometry
and microscopy are invaluable tools that can be employed to interrogate
the lipidome of S. aureus-infected murine femurs to reveal metabolic and
signaling consequences of infection. Here, nearly 250 lipids were
spatially mapped to healthy and infection-associated morphological
features throughout the femur, establishing composition profiles for
tissue types. Ether lipids and arachidonoyl lipids were significantly
altered between cells and tissue structures in abscesses, suggesting their
roles in abscess formation and inflammatory signaling. Sterols,
triglycerides, bis(monoacylglycero)phosphates, and gangliosides possessed
ring-like distributions throughout the abscess, suggesting a hypothesized
dysregulation of lipid metabolism in a population of cells that cannot be
discerned with traditional microscopy. These data provide chemical insight
into the signaling function and metabolism of cells in the fibrotic border
of abscesses, likely characteristic of lipid-laden macrophages.