Whole-mouse clearing and imaging at the cellular level with vDISCO.
Ruiyao CaiZeynep Ilgin KolabasChenchen PanHongcheng MaiShan ZhaoDoris KalteneckerFabian F VoigtMuge MolbayTzu-Lun OhnCécile VinckeMihail I TodorovFritjof HelmchenJo A Van GinderachterAli ErturkPublished in: Nature protocols (2023)
Homeostatic and pathological phenomena often affect multiple organs across the whole organism. Tissue clearing methods, together with recent advances in microscopy, have made holistic examinations of biological samples feasible. Here, we report the detailed protocol for nanobody(V H H)-boosted 3D imaging of solvent-cleared organs (vDISCO), a pressure-driven, nanobody-based whole-body immunolabeling and clearing method that renders whole mice transparent in 3 weeks, consistently enhancing the signal of fluorescent proteins, stabilizing them for years. This allows the reliable detection and quantification of fluorescent signal in intact rodents enabling the analysis of an entire body at cellular resolution. Here, we show the high versatility of vDISCO applied to boost the fluorescence signal of genetically expressed reporters and clear multiple dissected organs and tissues, as well as how to image processed samples using multiple fluorescence microscopy systems. The entire protocol is accessible to laboratories with limited expertise in tissue clearing. In addition to its applications in obtaining a whole-mouse neuronal projection map, detecting single-cell metastases in whole mice and identifying previously undescribed anatomical structures, we further show the visualization of the entire mouse lymphatic system, the application for virus tracing and the visualization of all pericytes in the brain. Taken together, our vDISCO pipeline allows systematic and comprehensive studies of cellular phenomena and connectivity in whole bodies.
Keyphrases
- single molecule
- high resolution
- label free
- living cells
- single cell
- randomized controlled trial
- resting state
- quantum dots
- high fat diet induced
- high speed
- white matter
- optical coherence tomography
- mass spectrometry
- functional connectivity
- cerebral ischemia
- magnetic resonance imaging
- deep learning
- type diabetes
- metabolic syndrome
- computed tomography
- photodynamic therapy
- multiple sclerosis
- blood brain barrier
- image quality