Name: novel passive clearing methods for the rapid production of optical transparency in whole cns tissue
Uploaded: 2018-05-08T14:00:00
Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Novel Passive Clearing Methods for the Rapid Production of Optical Transparency in Whole CNS Tissue at JoVE.com

This work was supported by the Brain Korea 21 PLUS Project for Medical Science, Yonsei University. In addition, this work was supported by a grant from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017R1D1A1B03030315).

All procedures have been approved by the appropriate research ethics committee at Yonsei University College of Medicine. All experimental animals are sacrificed in accordance with the guidelines of the laboratory animal care committee at Yonsei University College of Medicine.
1. Preparation of Reagents
Caution: Paraformaldehyde (PFA), acrylamide and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) are toxic irritants and thus should be handled in a fume hood with appropriate personal pro...

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While the passive, non-electrophoretic extraction methods employed in PACT significantly improved the consistency achieved with previous tissue clearing methods such as CLARITY2,3,4,7,8, the technique still bears several shortcomings, the most pressing of which is the length of time required to achieve maximal tissue clarity12. In the c...

A fundamental objective of scientific and clinical inquiry involves attaining a complete understanding of organ structure and function; however, the exceedingly complex nature of mammalian organs often serves as a barrier to fully achieving this aim1. CLARITY (Clear Lipid-exchanged Acrylamide-hybridized Rigid Imaging-compatible Tisssue-hYdrogel)2,3,4, which involves building an acrylamide-based hydrogel hybrid from intact tissues, achieves optical clearance of a variety of organs, including the brain, liver, and spleen, while preserving their structural integrity5. CLARITY has thus enabled not only visualization but also the opportunity to finely dissect complex cellular networks and tissue morphologies without the need for sectioning.
In order to achieve tissue clearance, CLARITY employs electrophoretic methods to remove the lipid content of the sample at hand. While CLARITY has been noted for producing physically stable tissue-hydrogel hybrids, studies have shown that its use of electrophoretic tissue clearing (ETC) methods yields variable results in terms of tissue quality, including browning, epitope damage, and protein loss5,6. To address these issues, modified protocols such as PACT (PAssive Clarity Technique), which replaces the ETC treatment with a passive, ionic-detergent based delipidation technique, have been developed7,8,9. Despite achieving a greater consistency in results, however, PACT requires more time to obtain maximal clearance. Furthermore, none of these techniques have yet been applied to the whole CNS form, or in larger rodent models such as rats and guinea pigs.
The present study seeks to address these limitations by proposing novel methodologies, psPACT (process-separate PACT) and mPACT (modified PACT), for facilitating the fast clearance of the whole CNS and internal organs in both mouse and rat models10. Specifically, psPACT processes tissues in 4% acrylamide and 0.25% VA-044 in two separate steps during hydrogel formation; mPACT essentially involves the same steps, but supplements the SDS-based clearing solution with 0.5% &#945;-thioglycerol as a key reagent. Both techniques harness the endogenous systemic and cerebrospinal circulatory systems to significantly reduce the time needed to produce optical clearance. As a proof of principle, we demonstrate the use of confocal microscopy to analyze blood vessel patterns in the cleared tissues10.

<table>
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS)</td>
			<td>Affymetrix, Inc.</td>
			<td>75819</td>
			<td>Clearing solution</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Nycodenz</td>
			<td>Axia-Shield</td>
			<td>1002424</td>
			<td>nRIMS solution</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>40% Acrylamide Solution</td>
			<td>Bio Rad Laboratories, Inc.</td>
			<td>161-0140</td>
			<td>Polymerization (A4P0)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>2,2&#180;-Azobis[2-(2-imidazolin-2-yl)propane] Dihydrochloride</td>
			<td>Wako Pure Chemical Industries, Ltd.</td>
			<td>017-19362</td>
			<td>Polymerization (VA-044)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>1-Thioglycerol</td>
			<td>Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>M1753-100ML</td>
			<td>Clearing solution (mPACT)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Tween-20</td>
			<td>Georgiachem</td>
			<td>9005-64-5</td>
			<td>nRIMS solution</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Triton X-100</td>
			<td>Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>T8787-50ML</td>
			<td>Immuno Staining</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Bovine serum albumin (BSA)</td>
			<td>Bovogen</td>
			<td>BSA100</td>
			<td>Immuno Staining</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Heparin</td>
			<td>Merck Millipore</td>
			<td>375095</td>
			<td>Perfusion (PBS)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Sodium azide</td>
			<td>Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>S2002-25G</td>
			<td>nRIMS solution</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>PECAM-CD31 antibody</td>
			<td>Santa Cruz Biotechnology Inc.</td>
			<td>sc-28188</td>
			<td>Immuno Staining</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Goat anti-rabbit-IgG Cy3 fluorescent conjugate</td>
			<td>Jackson ImmunoResearch Inc.</td>
			<td>111-165-003</td>
			<td>Immuno Staining</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>4% Paraformaldehyde</td>
			<td>Tech &#38; Innovation</td>
			<td>BPP-9004</td>
			<td>Perfusion, Polymerization</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>20X Phosphate Buffered Saline (pH 7.4)</td>
			<td>Tech &#38; Innovation</td>
			<td>BPB-9121</td>
			<td>Perfusion, Buffer</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>10 mL stripette</td>
			<td>Coatar</td>
			<td>4488</td>
			<td>Solution transfer</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>50 mL tube</td>
			<td>Falcon</td>
			<td>352070</td>
			<td>Clearing tube</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>35 mm Cell culture dish</td>
			<td>SPL</td>
			<td>20035</td>
			<td>Imaging</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Confocal dish</td>
			<td>SPL</td>
			<td>211350</td>
			<td>Imaging</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>1 mL syringe</td>
			<td>Korea vaccine Co., Ltd</td>
			<td>26G 1/2</td>
			<td>Anesthetize&#160;</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>50 mL syringe</td>
			<td>Korea vaccine Co., Ltd</td>
			<td>21G1 1/4</td>
			<td>Perfusion</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Acrylamide</td>
			<td>Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>A3553</td>
			<td>Polymerization (A4P0)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Whatman 3MM paper</td>
			<td>Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>Z270849</td>
			<td>Blotting paper for gel removal</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Confocal microscope</td>
			<td>Zeiss</td>
			<td>LSM780</td>
			<td>Imaging</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>ZEN lite Software</td>
			<td>Zeiss</td>
			<td>ZEN 2012</td>
			<td>Imaging</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Peristaltic pump</td>
			<td>Longerpump</td>
			<td>BT100-1F</td>
			<td>Perfusion</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>EasyGel</td>
			<td>Lifecanvas Technologies</td>
			<td>EasyGel</td>
			<td>Tissue gel hybridization system</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

novel passive clearing methods for the rapid production of optical transparency in whole cns tissue

Since the development of CLARITY, a bioelectrochemical clearing technique that allows for three-dimensional phenotype mapping within transparent tissues, a multitude of novel clearing methodologies including CUBIC (clear, unobstructed brain imaging cocktails and computational analysis), SWITCH (system-wide control of interaction time and kinetics of chemicals), MAP (magnified analysis of the proteome), and PACT (passive clarity technique), have been established to further expand the existing toolkit for the microscopic analysis of biological tissues. The present study aims to improve upon and optimize the original PACT procedure for an array of intact rodent tissues, including the whole central nervous system (CNS), kidneys, spleen, and whole mouse embryos. Termed psPACT (process-separate PACT) and mPACT (modified PACT), these novel techniques provide highly efficacious means of mapping cell circuitry and visualizing subcellular structures in intact normal and pathological tissues. In the following protocol, we provide a detailed, step-by-step outline on how to achieve maximal tissue clearance with minimal invasion of their structural integrity via psPACT and mPACT.

Generation of a transparent model of the whole CNS using optimized passive clearing techniques
Optical clearance of mouse and rat whole CNS tissues was rapidly achieved using various passive clearing techniques (Figure 1). A schematic of tissue clearing over time is shown in Figure 2A. Unlike the original PACT method, psPACT (process-separate PACT) invo...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Novel Passive Clearing Methods for the Rapid Production of Optical Transparency in Whole CNS Tissue at JoVE.com

Novel Passive Clearing Methods for the Rapid Production of Optical Transparency in Whole CNS Tissue

Here, we present two novel methodologies, psPACT and mPACT, for achieving maximal optical transparency and subsequent microscopic analysis of tissue vasculature in the intact rodent whole CNS.

Since the development of CLARITY, a bioelectrochemical clearing technique that allows for three-dimensional phenotype mapping within transparent tissues, ...

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