TY - CONF A1 - Lauer, Franziska A1 - Diehn, Sabrina A1 - Seifert, Stephan A1 - Weidner, Steffen A1 - Kneipp, Janina T1 - Quantitative profiling of pollen grain mixtures by multivariate MALDI-TOF MSI N2 - Anemophilous plants produce pollen grains, which have to be monitored to provide a national information network for persons suffering from an allergy. The current conventional characterization and identification of pollen is performed by time-consuming microscopic examinations based on the genus-specific pollen shape and size. These examinations need proficient researchers, are not statistically validated, and additionally rely on relatively inaccurate observations of the pollination process. A variety of spectroscopic and spectrometric approaches have been proposed to develop a fast and reliable pollen identification using specific molecular information. Amongst them, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) was recently applied for the rapid investigation of such complex biological samples. The combination of obtained peak patterns from pollen mass spectra and multivariate statistic provide a powerful tool for identifying taxonomic relationships. A novel application based on the use of conductive carbon tape as MALDI target simplified the sample preparation and yielded enhanced the quality of the mass spectra. This led to a sufficient statistical analysis of the MS pattern, which is important when identify pollen grains in natural species mixtures. Based on this approach, promising results could be obtained by MALDI-TOF MS imaging (MSI) of artificial pollen mixtures followed by multivariate analysis. Of special interest is here the determination of the detection limit (number of pollen grains). Therefore, different pollen grain compositions were investigated for quantitative profiling of each individual pollen species within these complex mixtures. Our results can be used to improve the taxonomic differentiation and identification of pollen species and might be useful for the development of a routine method to identify pollen based on imaging mass spectrometry. T2 - Euroanalysis 2017 CY - Stockholm, Sweden DA - 28.08.2017 KW - MALDI-TOF MS KW - Imaging KW - Conductive carbon tape KW - Pollen KW - PCA PY - 2017 AN - OPUS4-42749 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -