Histological Examination of Mitochondrial Morphology in a Parkinson's Disease Model

Our laboratory investigates the cellular mechanism involving protein aggregation in the context of Parkinson's disease. In addition, we use cellular and animal models for testing potential treatments against Parkinson's disease. In this article, we propose a protocol for the study of mitochondrial morphology in situ as an indicator of their health based on immunostaining and image analysis in paraffin-embedded tissue sections.

Mitochondrial morphology has been extensively studied in Parkinson's disease and other diseases in vitro. Nevertheless, protocols for studying mitochondrial morphology in vivo are still lacking. This protocol provides a robust method for staining mitochondria in brain tissue, and it explains in details how to perform the morphological analysis.

This study shows that immunostaining combined with image analysis is a reliable method for understanding mitochondrial morphology. In fact, it allows to quantify the number of mitochondria as well as other morphological parameters, such as the aspect ratio in both cell culture and tissue. Importantly, as this method is immunofluorescence based, it is possible to relate the morphologies back to specific cellular populations.

Here we present a protocol for studying mitochondrial morphology in Parkinson's disease, but this protocol can be applied to any in vivo disease model. In addition, it may aid screening lead compounds for the treatment of not only Parkinson disease, but also any other disease characterized by mitochondrial dysregulation.