Question

The technique used to study the spatial distribution of nutrients in plant tissues at a cellular level is?

• A. Immunohistochemistry
• B. Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS)
• C. Metabolomics
• D. RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq)

Hint:

Think about which technique physically scans a tissue section point by point to measure elemental content at each spot.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

Step 1: Understand what the question is asking.
The question wants a technique that can show WHERE mineral nutrients, elements like potassium, zinc, iron, calcium, sit inside plant tissue, down to the level of individual cells, not just how much of a nutrient is present overall.

Step 2: Check each technique against this need.
Immunohistochemistry uses antibodies to locate specific proteins in tissue sections, so it maps proteins, not elemental mineral nutrients.
Metabolomics measures the full set of small-molecule metabolites in a sample, giving a chemical profile, but it does not give a spatial picture of where elements sit within tissue.
RNA-sequencing reads out which genes are being expressed as messenger RNA, telling us about gene activity, not the physical location of mineral elements.
Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) works by firing a fine laser beam across a thin tissue section, vaporizing tiny spots of tissue point by point, and feeding each vaporized spot into a mass spectrometer that measures its elemental content.

Step 3: See why LA-ICP-MS fits best.
Because the laser scans the tissue spot by spot at a very fine scale, LA-ICP-MS builds up a map of exactly which elements sit in which region of the tissue, right down to individual cells, which is precisely the spatial nutrient-distribution picture the question describes.

Final Answer:
The technique for mapping nutrient distribution in plant tissue at cellular resolution is laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS).
\[ \boxed{\text{LA-ICP-MS}} \]