Content

The lipid composition of the synapse has been difficult to study. Structural lipids, including abundant phospholipids, cholesterol or sphingolipids, are poorly understood. Their concentrations in synaptic membranes are unclear, and their distributions are virtually unknown. I approached this problem by combining two state-of-the-art lipid analysis tools, based on secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS): time-of-flight SIMS (ToF-SIMS), and nanoscale SIMS (NanoSIMS).