최원실 (서울대학교 농생명과학공동기기원)

양승옥 (서울대학교 농생명과학공동기기원)

최원실 (서울대학교 농생명과학공동기기원)

최원실 (서울대학교 농생명과학공동기기원)

양승옥 (서울대학교 농생명과학공동기기원)

최희정 (서울대학교 농생명과학공동기기원)

최주현 (서울대학교 농생명과학공동기기원)

Tomato fruits are rich in a diverse array of primary and secondary metabolites, whose spatial localization and compositional dynamics are critical to fruit development, ripening, nutritional quality, and stress responses. To comprehensively investigate these metabolic profiles and their spatial organization within tomato tissues, this study employed an integrated approach combining liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based metabolite profiling with mass spectrometry imaging (MSI).

Through LC-MS analysis, tomato-specific glycoalkaloids were successfully identified as key marker compounds, along with trigonelline and various choline- and adenosine-related metabolites. Concurrently, MSI mapped the distinct spatial distributions of these identified metabolites, as well as other co-localized metabolic features within the tissue. Notably, the collision cross section (CCS) values extracted from the imaging datasets demonstrated strong alignment with the LC-MS results, thereby validating the accuracy of the analytical platform.

By merging the quantitative strengths of LC-MS with the visual capabilities of MSI, this integrated spatial metabolomics approach enables the complementary acquisition of both compositional and spatial metabolic data from tomato fruits. Consequently, this platform holds significant potential for advancing our understanding of metabolic regulation pathways, improving crop quality assessments, and driving the discovery of novel functional biomarkers in horticultural plants.