Transparent bodies
Found a quick and easy way to make mouse organs transparent
Anna Novikovskaya, Naked Science
In order to study an organ or tissue under a light microscope, it must be made transparent, otherwise only an indistinct dark mass will be visible in the eyepiece. Researchers use several methods, from cutting the sample into very thin layers (which implies partial damage to the original fabric architecture) to discoloration.
The latter process until recently was very time-consuming, required expensive equipment and work with dangerous organic solvents. Because of this, discoloration was used extremely rarely and was inaccessible to most scientists. However, now it seems that the situation has changed.
The new method of bleaching biological tissues, called EZ Clear, takes much less time (only 48 hours) and does not require special temperature conditions, and the organs are stored in an aqueous solution of tetrahydrofuran throughout the process, without drying out or changing shape. Moreover, the organs of mice discolored by this method can be immunofluorescently stained for further study.
The resulting transparent organs retain their shape and volume, and the tissues remain virtually intact, which opens up unprecedented prospects. Now it will be possible not only to study the structure of even the most delicate internal organs, but also to visualize, for example, neural connections between the brain and the eye or the thinnest network of vessels in the liver and kidneys.
Fluorescent blood vessels are visible in the transparent eye of the mouse. Drawing from the press release Simple, rapid and robust method makes mouse whole organs transparent for imaging - VM.
Compared to previously known methods of discoloration, EZ Clear has made it possible to obtain much clearer and more detailed images of mouse organs, although researchers have not yet tested its effectiveness on larger samples. Probably, the use of EZ Clear to study the tissues of pigs or primates will require optimization of the method (for example, adjusting the concentrations of the required solutions), but scientists expect that their method will justify itself even when working with human organs.
The study was published in the journal eLife (Hsu et al., EZ Clear for simple, rapid, and robust mouse whole organ clearing).
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