Expansion Lattice Light-Sheet Microscopy Reveals Subcellular Organization and Molecular Profile of the Brain with Nanoscopic Resolution
摘要
Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) uses a sheet of light to spatially confine excitation of fluorophores to a narrow cross-section of the sample. Lattice light-sheet microscopy (LLSM) is an emerging LSFM method that takes advantage of light-sheet generated by an optical lattice. The ultra-thin illumination of LLSM serves to enhance the axial resolution and reduce the photobleaching effect of conventional LSFM methods. When combined with tissue clearing and expansion, LLSM allows fast volumetric imaging of cellular and subcellular morphologies across a large sample size with nanoscale resolution and molecular contrast. In this chapter, we introduce a recently developed method named expansion lattice light-sheet microscopy (ExLLSM or ExL) to demonstrate the advantage of this combination. Using ExL, we show the molecular imaging of subcellular morphologies across the mouse cortex and Drosophila brain with sub-diffraction-limit resolution. We further describe the technical details of ExL to enhance its accessibility for the imaging and neuroscience communities.