A Taiwanese research team has achieved a significant breakthrough in optical microscopy, using chemical expansion to enlarge the volume of brain tissue samples by up to 64,000 times to allow detailed imaging of neural synapses, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday.
The project was led by Chen Pi-chang (陳壁彰) from Academia Sinica’s Research Center for Applied Sciences and supported by the Young Scholars’ Research Program.
Their work was published in the international scientific journal Nature Communications.
Photo: CNA
The team achieved nanoscale visualization of neural synapses in a fly’s brain using a new technology called potassium acrylate expansion light sheet nanomicroscopy (KA-ExM), the council said in a news release.
The technique uses a highly absorbent hydrogel made from potassium acrylate to uniformly expand biological samples by up to 40 times, expanding the volume by a factor of 64,000, it said.
A fruit fly brain, roughly 0.5mm in size, can be enlarged to 1 to 2cm, allowing detailed imaging of neural networks using Bessel light sheet microscopy, it said.
Traditional optical microscopes are limited by a diffraction limit of 200 nanometers, while electron microscopes require a vacuum environment which might alter samples and can only capture black-and-white imaging, it added.
The KA-ExM method can expand samples to achieve deep tissue 3D imaging with multicolor fluorescence labeling and resolutions of 10 nanometers by physically expanding the samples, it said.
The news release compared the technology to a photograph that could capture the entirety of Taipei 101 and still be able to see microscopic details inside the building.
The findings are not only applicable to insect brains, but to mouse and human tissues, which could transform neuroscience and biomedical research, it said.
Potential uses include deepening understanding of neural circuits, and assisting in early diagnosis and treatment of various neurological disorders, it said.
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