Fig. 6: Spatial multiomics integration resolves mass isomers and unravels taxon-specific pathways in the leaf-cutter ant fungal garden ecosystem.

The following are the included taxon-specific pathways. a, Catabolic pathway of fuconate by fungi. b, Phosphorylation reaction of fuconate’s mass isomer glucose by the enzyme hexokinase, taxonomically assigned to the phylum Arthropoda. Metabolite MALDI–FTICR–MSI images visualize the relative abundance of each metabolite across section 1. Metabolite ion images of replicate section 9 are provided in Supplementary Fig. 3. The three green circles and one white circle depict the LM and PMM ROIs, respectively (LM1, n = 3; LM2, n = 3; LM3, n = 6; PMM, n = 3). Complementary microPOTS enzyme identifications are shown above each reaction arrow, with the table denoting if the enzyme was detected (O) or absent (X) in LM1, LM2, LM3 or PMM. An enzyme was considered present if it was detected in at least two section replicates within each ROI. A detailed list of enzymes with their corresponding peptides, taxonomic assignments and ROI-specific localization is included in Supplementary Table 10. Colored circles next to the metabolite names indicate that metabolite identities were confirmed by different orthogonal techniques via MS/MS (MS² or MS/MS), included in Supplementary Fig. 2. Numbers within each circle indicate metabolite identification metrics (that is, 1 (high) to 5 (low))³⁶, as detailed in Supplementary Fig. 2.