MRSI vs CEST MRI to understand tomato metabolism in ripening fruit: is there a better contrast?

Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry volume 413, pages1251–1257(2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Besides structural information, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is crucial to reveal the presence and gradients of metabolites in organs constituted of several tissues. In plant science, such knowledge is key to better understand fruit development and metabolism. Routine methods based on fixation for cytological studies or dissection for metabolite measurements induce biases and plant sample destruction. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging (MSRI) leads to one NMR spectrum per pixel while chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) MRI allows mapping metabolites having exchangeable protons. As both methods present different advantages and drawbacks, we compared them to map metabolites in ripe tomato fruits. We demonstrated that MRSI was difficult to interpret due to large spatial chemical shift variations while CEST MRI produced promising image mapping of the main carbohydrates and amino acids. It showed that glucose/fructose was mostly located in the locular tissue, whereas glutamate/glutamine/GABA was found inside the columella.

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Data availability

Data are available at the following link: https://data.inrae.fr/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.15454/PYMPNP

Change history

Abbreviations

CaCl2 :

Calcium chloride

CEST:

Chemical exchange saturation transfer

CSI:

Chemical shift imaging

FLASH:

Fast low angle shot

FOV:

Field of view

GABA:

2-Aminobutyric acid

INRAE:

French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment

MTRasym :

Magnetization transfer ratio asymmetry

MR:

Magnetic resonance

MRI:

Magnetic resonance imaging

MRSI:

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging

NMR:

Nuclear magnetic resonance

RARE:

Rapid acquisition with relaxation enhancement

RF:

Radiofrequency

SNR:

Signal to noise ratio

WASSR:

Water saturation shift referencing

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Acknowledgments

We thank Isabelle Atienza for growing the tomato plants and Florie Cassiau for help with ESM Fig. S1 drawing.

Code availability

MATLAB codes are available upon request from the corresponding author.

Funding

This work was partially supported by the IB2019_GelSeed project of the INRAE BAP division and MetaboHUB (ANR-11-INBS-0010).

Author information

Affiliations

  1. INRAE, UR QuaPA, 63122, Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France

    Guilhem Pagés & Jean-Marie Bonny

  2. AgroResonance, INRAE, 2018, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility for Agronomy, Food and Health, Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France

    Guilhem Pagés & Jean-Marie Bonny

  3. PMB-Metabolome, INRAE, 2018, Bordeaux Metabolome – MetaboHUB, Villenave d’Ornon, France

    Catherine Deborde & Annick Moing

  4. INRAE, Univ. Bordeaux, UMR BFP, 33140, Villenave d’Ornon, France

    Catherine Deborde, Martine Lemaire-Chamley & Annick Moing

Authors
  1. Guilhem Pagés
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  2. Catherine Deborde
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  3. Martine Lemaire-Chamley
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  4. Annick Moing
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  5. Jean-Marie Bonny
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Contributions

Guilhem Pagés: conceptualization, investigation, writing—original draft, review, and editing. Catherine Deborde: conceptualization, writing—original draft, and review. Martine Lemaire-Chamley: funding acquisition, resources, writing—original draft, and review. Annick Moing: supervision, writing—original draft, and review. Jean-Marie Bonny: supervision, writing—review.

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Correspondence to Guilhem Pagés.

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Pagés, G., Deborde, C., Lemaire-Chamley, M. et al. MRSI vs CEST MRI to understand tomato metabolism in ripening fruit: is there a better contrast?. Anal Bioanal Chem 413, 1251–1257 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-020-03101-w

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Keywords

  • Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST)
  • Magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging (MRSI)
  • Metabolites
  • Ripe fruit
  • Sugars
  • Tomato