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.