Zibo Yang, a chemist at Oklahoma University, developed a new mass spectrometry technique with his colleagues. Mass spectrometry can analyze an individual living cell’s metabolites and lipids in minutes. This new discovery will advance the research of small molecules inside a single cell by inserting a tiny probe into it. This new method can analyze the contents of an individual cell in about 3 minutes. “They’re extending mass spectrometry to a new dimension” says Peter Nemes, a chemist at George Washington University. Understanding biochemical differences between cells can help researchers pinpoint the trademarks of cancer or neurological disease and investigate how individual cells respond to drugs. Jonathan V. Sweedler, an analytical chemist at the University of Illinois, stated that single-cell mass spectrometry could contribute to biological discoveries that are not probable in single-cell analysis methods involving fluorescence imaging. Many other single-cell mass spectrometry techniques require putting cells under a vacuum or placing them into a matrix, which can kill or alter the cells. Overall, this is a great development in the science world that will positively contribute to the efforts of these chemists, and I thought this topic was relevant due to our recent labs about spectrometry.
Submitted by Marc Longe
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