ABOVE: A forest of dendritic spines protrudes from the branches of neurons in the mouse cortex.
GAO ET AL., SCIENCE, 2019
A new technique that marries two methods, expansion microscopy and lattice light-sheet microscopy, has allowed researchers to image a fruit fly’s brain in its entirety with intricate detail and in a flash, relative to other microscopy approaches, scientists reported yesterday (January 17) in Science.
Expansion microscopy “blows up” the tissue before imaging to make it easier to see details. To do this, the researchers add a swelling, water-absorbent polymer gel to preserved tissue. When transferred from a salty bath to pure water, the polymer grows, stretching out the tissue. In the case of the fly brain imaged in this work, the tissue ballooned by a factor of four.
The imaging relies on fluorescent tags that glom onto proteins in cells and also attach to the gel. The proteins are digested ...
