By Elizabeth Randall.
“This image illustrates the coating of biological cells in tissue with a layer of matrix crystals. Imaging of biological tissues and the distribution of molecules within them can be helpful in understanding what causes disease and how it progresses. This is important in many fields of biomedical, physical and chemical research.”
One of these imaging methods, mass spectrometry, can produce pictures of many different types of biological molecule. This involves coating the tissue in a crystalline substance - or matrix - which extracts molecules of interest out of the tissue.
The addition of a matrix to the sample results in a more efficient analysis but has a number of drawbacks.
My research involves using a variety of different methods to try and better understand the drawbacks of this approach in order to overcome them.
Elizabeth Randall is a postgraduate researcher in the School of Chemistry.