![]() ![]() ![]() Hans Ulrich Dodt, senior author of the study.Ī 3-D view of whole animal nervous systems to explore neural stem cell biologyīesides its compatibility with many species, another attractive feature of DEEP-Clear is that the transparency of the processed organisms allows for imaging of samples across scales: On the one hand, the team looked into very small details such as contact points between neurons, or individual clusters of dividing cells. ![]() It just has not been tried yet," explains Prof. We believe that the method is applicable to multiple organisms. This way multiple organisms could be imaged from different clades ranging from mollusks to bony fish to amphibians. "Shortening chemical processing preserves the integrity of tissues and organisms, so that the molecules and internal structures of interest are more likely to be retained," explains Marko Pende, the developer of the clearing method, from the lab of Hans-Ulrich Dodt at the TU Wien and the Center for Brain Research (CBR) of the Medical University of Vienna, and one of the first authors of the study. This new approach-dubbed "DEEP-Clear"-has now been published in the international journal Science Advances.Ī toolkit for imaging biomolecules in the nervous systems of a broad panel of speciesĪn important observation that helped to develop the new method was that the combination of different chemical treatments had a synergistic effect, allowing for fast depigmentation and tissue clearing. In a team effort, researchers from the Max Perutz Labs, the Medical University of Vienna and the TU Wien (Vienna) and their collaborators have now developed a new method that combines tissue clearing with the removal of various pigment types as they are characteristic for most animals. Therefore, despite the power of tissue clearing approaches, they have essentially remained restricted to specific unpigmented organs like the brain, and a handful of model species that have reduced pigmentation.ĭepigmentation and tissue clearing enable 3D reconstruction with Light-sheet of squid nervous system. However, existing clearing techniques so far were not optimized to remove a variety of pigments that are present in tissues, and that limit how deeply these specimens can be imaged. When applied to complex tissues, including the brain, such techniques allow the visualization of individual cells and their extensions, enabling scientists to capture 3-D images of cells and tissues without the need of sectioning. Reconstructing such projections from small slices is extremely challenging.Īn elegant solution to avoid this is provided by tissue clearing techniques that can render opaque tissues transparent. For instance, the cells that make up our nervous systems possess long extensions that can reach through the entire body. However, this is a laborious process, and often yields incomplete results. A standard approach so far was to cut larger tissues into thin layers, study each of these sections, and then piece the information again together into a 3-D model. Analyses of individual cells in the context of whole organs or tissues is becoming increasingly important in biology. ![]()
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