Whole-mouse Clearing and Imaging at the Cellular Level with VDISCO

Overview

Journal Nat Protoc

Specialties Biology
Pathology
Science

Date 2023 Jan 25

PMID 36697871

Authors

Ruiyao Cai

Zeynep Ilgin Kolabas

Chenchen Pan

Hongcheng Mai

Shan Zhao

Doris Kaltenecker

Fabian F Voigt

Muge Molbay

Tzu-Lun Ohn

Cecile Vincke

Mihail I Todorov

Fritjof Helmchen

Jo A Van Ginderachter

Ali Erturk

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

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(VH)-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.

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