Versatile whole-organ/body staining and imaging based on electrolyte-gel properties of biological tissues

Abstract

Whole-organ/body three-dimensional (3D) staining and imaging have been enduring challenges in histology. By dissecting the complex physicochemical environment of the staining system, we developed a highly optimized 3D staining imaging pipeline based on CUBIC. Based on our precise characterization of biological tissues as an electrolyte gel, we experimentally evaluated broad 3D staining conditions by using an artificial tissue-mimicking material. The combination of optimized conditions allows a bottom-up design of a superior 3D staining protocol that can uniformly label whole adult mouse brains, an adult marmoset brain hemisphere, an ~1 cm3 tissue block of a postmortem adult human cerebellum, and an entire infant marmoset body with dozens of antibodies and cell-impermeant nuclear stains. The whole-organ 3D images collected by light-sheet microscopy are used for computational analyses and whole-organ comparison analysis between species. This pipeline, named CUBIC-HistoVIsion, thus offers advanced opportunities for organ- and organism-scale histological analysis of multicellular systems.