Q&A: How can advances in tissue clearing and optogenetics contribute to our understanding of normal and diseased biology?

Mammalian organs comprise a variety of cells that interact with each other and have distinct biological roles. Access to evaluate and perturb intact biological systems at the cellular and molecular levels is essential to fully understand their functioning in normal and diseased conditions, yet techn...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBMC biology Vol. 15; no. 1; p. 87
Main Authors Greenbaum, Alon, Jang, Min J, Challis, Collin, Gradinaru, Viviana
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England BioMed Central Ltd 25.09.2017
BioMed Central
Subjects
Animals
Brain research
Clearing
Diagnostic Techniques and Procedures - instrumentation
Gene expression
Genetics
Hydrogels
Information processing
Interrogation
Light
Lipids
Mammals
Medical imaging
Methods
Microscopy
Nervous system
Neurosciences
Optics
Optogenetics - instrumentation
Optogenetics - methods
Organs
Proteins
Question and Answer
Questions and answers
Studies
Tissue Fixation - instrumentation
Tissue Fixation - methods
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Summary:Mammalian organs comprise a variety of cells that interact with each other and have distinct biological roles. Access to evaluate and perturb intact biological systems at the cellular and molecular levels is essential to fully understand their functioning in normal and diseased conditions, yet technical limitations have constrained most research to small pieces of tissue. Tissue clearing and optogenetics can help overcome this hurdle: tissue clearing affords optical interrogation of whole organs at the molecular level, and optogenetics enables the scalable control and measurement of cellular activity with light. In this Q&A, we delineate recent advances and practical challenges associated with these two techniques when applied body-wide.
ISSN:1741-7007
1741-7007
DOI:10.1186/s12915-017-0421-3