Morphological and tissue characterization of the medicinal fungus Hericium coralloides by a structural and molecular imaging platform

Abstract

In this study the potential of new imaging techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization (MALDI) profiling mass spectrometry ("MALDI Profiling") and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopic imaging was evaluated to study morphological and molecular patterns of the potential medicinal fungus Hericium coralloides. For interpretation, the MALDI profiling, FTIR imaging and MRI results were correlated with histological information gained from Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Light Microscopy (LM). Additionally we tested several evaluation processes and optimized the methodology for use of complex FTIR images to monitor molecular patterns. It is demonstrated that the combination of these spectroscopic methods enables to gain a more distinct picture concerning morphology and distribution of active ingredients. We were able to obtain high quality FTIR imaging and MALDI-profiling results and to distinguish different tissue types with their chemical ingredients. Beside this, we have created a 3-D reconstruction of a mature Hericium basidioma, based on the MRI dataset: analyses allowed, for the first time, a realistic approximation of the "evolutionary effectiveness" of this bizarrely formed basidioma type, concerning the investment of sterile tissue and its reproductive output (production of basidiospores).

Assessing the discrimination potential of linear and non-linear supervised chemometric methods on a filamentous fungi FTIR spectral database

“…Mucorales 857 (42) 39 (2) 433 (19) 371 (17) 412 (18) 355 (16) 104 (5) 441 (22) 427 (19) 337 (17) 45 (2) 57 (3) 21 (1) 392 (17) 320 (13) 24 (1) 84 (4) 119 (6) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 Figure 1: Raw and preprocessed FT-IR spectra of an Alternaria alternata strain with a tentative band assignment of major macromolecules. …”

“…NIR 69 spectroscopy is, therefore, not a particularly sensitive technique, but it can be very useful in 70 probing bulk material with little or no sample preparation. Another analytical method that has emerged as a new including FTIR and MALDI-TOF, in a multimodality platform for a deeper characterization 84 of the potential medicinal fungus Hericium coralloides [6]. FTIR and NIR 72 approaches have proved to be very effective in the characterization, differentiation, and 73 identification of various fungi [2,3,4,5].…”

Assessing various Infrared (IR) microscopic imaging techniques for post-mortem interval evaluation of human skeletal remains

“…With these methods it is possible to gain qualitative and quantitative information from heterogeneous samples, since the individual IR spectrum of any compound represents a unique `molecular fingerprint´ [27, 28]. IR microscopic imaging has already been utilised with great success for the characterization of biological specimens [29–42], malignancies in several tissues [25, 43–56], in environmental mapping [57], precision farming [58], food quality evaluation [59], product functionality [60, 61], for ascertaining the severity of plant diseases [62, 63], detecting defects [64] and contaminations [65–67], as well as for assessing the distribution of certain chemical components [32, 39, 68–70]. Hence there is good reason to believe that IR microscopic imaging measurements may also be applicable for PMI estimation of human bones through the evaluation of molecular distribution patterns.…”

Integrated fiducial sample mount and software for correlated microscopy

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6] Therefore, researchers use a variety of analytical instruments to characterize the chemistry, crystal structures, and microstructures in materials on spatial scales spanning seven orders of magnitude, from centimeters (10 −2 m) to nanometers (10 −9 m). In principle, the same location on a single sample may be examined by several instruments employing vastly different scales that enable the correlation of the data and provide a thorough understanding of material properties.…”