Sung-Yon Kim, Ph.D. Rapid and quantitative immunostaining of intact biological systems
Channel: Simons Center for the Social Brain
Date: 2015-12-02

For decades, immunohistochemical techniques on micron-thick sections have been extensively used for investigation of tissue samples across biology and medicine. However, three-dimensional information is lost unless a sophisticated and laborious 3D reconstruction is employed. CLARITY has succeeded in proving that an intact brain could be optically cleared and that fluorescent molecules could be imaged, but antibody penetration was still poor because of the inherently slow nature of passive diffusion. We have been developing a new technology termed eTANGO to address this problem and have applied the technique to CLARITY-processed brain tissues to achieve rapid and uniform immunostaining. Recent progress and several proof-of-concept results are presented.