Micron-scale Resolution Optical Tomography of Entire Mouse Brains with Confocal Light Sheet Microscopy

Year: 2013

Authors: Silvestri L., Bria A., Costantini I., Sacconi L., Peng H.C., Iannello G., Pavone F.S.

Autors Affiliation: European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy (LENS); Integrated Research Centre, University Campus Bio-medico of Rome; DAEMI, University of Cassino; National Institute of Optics (CNR-INO); Allen Institute for Brain Science; Department of Physics, University of Florence; ICON Foundation, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy

Abstract: Understanding the architecture of mammalian brain at single-cell resolution is one of the key issues of neuroscience. However, mapping neuronal soma and projections throughout the whole brain is still challenging for imaging and data management technologies. Indeed, macroscopic volumes need to be reconstructed with high resolution and contrast in a reasonable time, producing datasets in the TeraByte range. We recently demonstrated an optical method (confocal light sheet microscopy, CLSM) capable of obtaining micron-scale reconstruction of entire mouse brains labeled with enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP). Combining light sheet illumination and confocal detection, CLSM allows deep imaging inside macroscopic cleared specimens with high contrast and speed. Here we describe the complete experimental pipeline to obtain comprehensive and human-readable images of entire mouse brains labeled with fluorescent proteins. The clearing and the mounting procedures are described, together with the steps to perform an optical tomography on its whole volume by acquiring many parallel adjacent stacks. We showed the usage of open-source custom-made software tools enabling stitching of the multiple stacks and multi-resolution data navigation. Finally, we illustrated some example of brain maps: the cerebellum from an L7-GFP transgenic mouse, in which all Purkinje cells are selectively labeled, and the whole brain from a thy1-GFP-M mouse, characterized by a random sparse neuronal labeling.

Journal/Review: JOVE-JOURNAL OF VISUALIZED EXPERIMENTS

Volume: (80)      Pages from: e50696-1  to: e50696-11

More Information: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreements n. 228334 and 241526. This research project has been also suppor ted by Human Frontier Science Program research grant (RGP0027/2009), and by the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research in the framework of the Flagship Project Nanomax and by Italian Ministry of Health in the framework of the Stem Cells Call for proposals. This research has been carried out in the framework of the research activities of ICON foundation supported by Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze.
KeyWords: Enhanced green fluorescent protein; Green fluorescent protein, anatomy and histology; Animal; Biosynthesis; Brain; Brain level; Brain mapping; Cerebellum; Chemistry; Confocal microscopy; Genetics; Mouse; Optical tomography; Procedures; Transgenic mouse, Animals; Brain; Brain Chemistry; Brain Mapping; Cerebellum; Green Fluorescent Proteins; Mice; Mice, Transgenic; Microscopy, Confocal; Tomography, Optical
DOI: 10.3791/50696

Citations: 17
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