Aqueus Reagent That Makes Tissue Transparent - RIKEN

Research teams from Japan's research organization RIKEN have come up with an astonishing aqueous reagent that will turn the biological tissues transparent. The initial tests being carried out on a Mouse brain have produced promising results. Fluorescence microscopy of the rodents’ brain treated with the reagent produced 3D images of blood vessels and neurons inside the brain.


Mouse embryos Left: embryo placed in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) after fixation with 4% paraformaldehyde (PFA). Right: embryo incubated in ScaleA2 solution for 2 weeks after fixation with 4% PFA. (Credit: Image courtesy of RIKEN)

Human efforts in biological exploration are limited primarily due to the visual limitations. Even modern day’s high quality methods face this problem. For instance the mechanical method still requires cutting and slicing of the part into small sections. Even though the optical method provides a better way but it is feasible up to 1mm only because of scattering properties of light.

Now the reagent called SCALE, produced by a team led by Atsushi Miyawaki at RIKEN brain science institute tried to tackle the previous problems by proposing two things.

The first one is by making the tissue transparent. This reagent does this quite well without any significant change in the shape of the sample. The second one is to avoid the decreasing intensity of signals emitted by genetically encoded tissues, which are used to identify each cells. The combination of the above two makes it possible to visualize the tissue in a better optical resolution and to reconstruct the complex network of cells and other things. Initial tests on mouse brain were great success and it helped in mapping the complex structure of cortex, white-matter etc

Potential of SCALE is much more than this. “Our current experiments are focused on mouse brain but experiments are neither limited to mice nor to the brain”, says Atsushi. He thinks that this potential reagent could help in the study of other complex organs like heart, kidneys and lungs. Atsushi and his team are now working towards a new reagent similar to the SCALE but it would enable lower level of transparency. Being very cheap and effective this reagent will largely help in studying complex human body. This will certainly be a milestone in the modern biological science.

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