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Development of Pico-ESI-MS for Single-Cell Metabolomics Analysis

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Single Cell Metabolism

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 2064))

Abstract

In this chapter, we introduced a Pico-ESI strategy for metabolomics analysis with picoliter-level samples. This Pico-ESI strategy was technically achieved by pulsed direct current electrospray ionization source (Pulsed-DC-ESI). This source could collect MS signals for a few minutes from a cell, enabling us to obtain large-scale MS2 data of metabolite IDs in single-cell analysis. Further identification of the single-cell metabolome such as the database match and chemical modification to metabolome was thereby achieved. Technically, this source could ionize sample with no need of sample and electrode contact, which can be potentially applied for high-throughput analysis. We also introduced several strategies related to Pico-ESI to reduce the matrix interference especially for extremely small samples developed in our group, including step-voltage nanoelectrospray, picoliter sample desalting method, droplet-based microextraction method, and probe-ESI, etc. All these strategies have been successfully applied to single-cell analysis.

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Acknowledgement

This research is supported by the 973 program (Grant 2013CB933800), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 21390411 and 21125525), and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grants 2011YQ090005 and 2011YQ6008402).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Zhenwei Wei, Xiaochao Zhang, Xingyu Si, Xiaoyun Gong, Sichun Zhang & Xinrong Zhang

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  1. Zhenwei Wei
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  2. Xiaochao Zhang
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  3. Xingyu Si
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  4. Xiaoyun Gong
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  5. Sichun Zhang
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  6. Xinrong Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xinrong Zhang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Waters Corporation, Milford, MA, USA

    Bindesh Shrestha

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Wei, Z., Zhang, X., Si, X., Gong, X., Zhang, S., Zhang, X. (2020). Development of Pico-ESI-MS for Single-Cell Metabolomics Analysis. In: Shrestha, B. (eds) Single Cell Metabolism. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2064. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9831-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9831-9_4

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-9829-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-9831-9

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