Kwanghun Chung1,2 & Karl Deisseroth1–4
1Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA. 2CNC Program, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA. 4Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford
University, Stanford, California, USA.
"CLARITY is a newly developed technology that can be used to transform intact biological tissue into a hybrid form in which tissue components are removed and replaced with exogenous elements for increased accessibility and functionality".
The main objective of this study is to improve the methodologies for brain mapping. Molecular phenotyping of the several layers of mammalian central nervous system is a very complex because the neural process acts as barriers for macromolecular diffusion. In the past decade, methods such as mechanical sectioning of tissue, optical clearing methods have been developed to improve tissue clearing. However, these methods were not suitable for whole-tissue molecular phenotyping. CLARITY method overcomes this issue and allows for molecular and optical interrogation of entire adult mouse brain. The cool feature of this technique is that it maintains fine structural resolution and molecular details along with macroscopic connectivity. The lipid bilayers that were hard to penetrate using other methods was replaced with a rigid and hydrogel-based infrastructure that preserves and allows access of structural and molecular information. A unique capability of CLARITY is that it preserves endogeneous biomolecules such as neurotransmitters, proteins and nucleic acids. CLARITY can also be used along with other genetic methods for identification of synapses or for labelling specific circuits.
For more reading visit http://clarityresourcecenter.org/
For more information watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-NMfp13Uug
-Madhan
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