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upstart writes:

New HYBRiD Technique for Making Tissue Transparent Could Speed the Study of Many Diseases:

[...] “This is a simple and universal tissue-clearing technique for studies of large body parts or even entire animals,” says study senior author Li Ye, PhD, assistant professor of neuroscience at Scripps Research.

Tissue-clearing involves the use of solvents to remove molecules that make tissue opaque (such as fat), rendering the tissue optically transparent—while keeping most proteins and structures in place. Scientists commonly use genetically encoded or antibody-linked fluorescent beacons to mark active genes or other molecules of interest in a lab animal, and tissue-clearing in principle allows these beacons to be imaged all at once across the entire animal.

[...] The new method devised by Ye and his team uses a sequential combination of organic solvents and water-based detergents, and makes use of water-based hydrogels to protect those molecules within the tissue that need to be preserved. It often does not require the pumping of solvents through the sample.

Journal Reference:
Nudell, Victoria, Wang, Yu, Pang, Zhengyuan, et al. HYBRiD: hydrogel-reinforced DISCO for clearing mammalian bodies [open], Nature Methods (DOI: 10.1038/s41592-022-01427-0)

Original Submission