Mass spectrometry coupled to imaging techniques: The better the view the greater the challenge

These are definitively exciting times for membrane lipid researchers. Once considered just as the cell membrane building blocks, the important role these lipids play is steadily being acknowledged. The improvement occurred in mass spectrometry techniques (MS) allows the establishment of the precise lipid composition of biological extracts. However, to fully understand the biological function of each individual lipid species, we need to know its spatial distribution and dynamics. In the past 10 years, the field has experienced a profound revolution thanks to the development of MS-based techniques allowing lipid imaging (MSI). Images reveal and verify what many lipid researchers had already shown by different means, but none as convincing as an image: each cell type presents a specific lipid composition, which is highly sensitive to its physiological and pathological state. While these techniques will help to place membrane lipids in the position they deserve, they also open the black box containing all the unknown regulatory mechanisms accounting for such tailored lipid composition. Thus, these results urges to different disciplines to redefine their paradigm of study by including the complexity revealed by the MSI techniques.

Spectroscopic study of galaxies in the Herschel Reference Sample

Galaxies are clusters of millions and billions of stars dynamically stable, with gas, dust and dark matter. They are the biggest isolated objects known in the Universe . Even though they are very complex systems, today we have a clear knowledge about their evolution and about their physical phenomena. Aside from the stellar component there is a gaseous component, principally neutral Hydrogen (HI), and dust that, although is not a significant component in terms of the mass, plays an important role on the absorption phenomena. Finally, cinematic and other kind of observations suggest the existence of a spheric dark matter halo, dominant in terms of mass and more extensive than the barionic component.