New clearing agent for clarity that replaces Focus Clear

Irene

Hi, i've recently published an article on a new clearing agent suitable with clarity that replaces Focus Clear. It is open access, the link is http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150507/srep09808/full/srep09808.html
Please ask me if you have any questions about it, it is very easy to do and cheap. Furthermore it is suitable with different type of microscopy.

dgroberts

@Irene Have you done any comparisons with RIMS from the PACT protocol? My main concern is imaging depth at this point. I have been able to effectively image as high as 4mm into an adult mouse brain hemisphere without signal drop-off using RIMS , but spinal cord has been more of an issue. Would you expect full light penetration through spinal cord with TDE, dorsal-to-ventral ~2mm?

dgroberts

@Irene Oh, and I'm using a Leica SP5 inverted confocal.

Irene

Hi @dgroberts, sorry i haven't done any comparison with RIMS from the PACT protocol. Unfortunately i haven't tried the TDE clearing on spinal cord neither, so i don't know the penetration depth achievable in this specimen. Anyway I would suggest you to try the TDE clearing without the combination with the CLARITY methods on your spinal cord sample. It is very easy and fast (just few hours), for mouse brain slices works very well, in this way you can test the maximum light penetration achievable with it.

Beatriche

@dgroberts I don't know if it is of any interest any longer but I've just started using CLARITY and on 1mm sections of mouse brain we use 63% TDE with great results