ExCel: Super-Resolution Imaging of C. elegans with Expansion Microscopy

Studies of C. elegans will benefit from a powerful method for super-resolution imaging of proteins and mRNAs at any 3-D locations throughout the entire animal. Conventional methods of super-resolution imaging in C. elegans, such as STORM, PALM, SR-SIM and STED, are limited by imaging depths that are...

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Main Authors: Yu, Chih-Chieh, Orozco Cosio, Danielle M, Boyden, Edward S
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer US 2023
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/150771
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author Yu, Chih-Chieh
Orozco Cosio, Danielle M
Boyden, Edward S
author_facet Yu, Chih-Chieh
Orozco Cosio, Danielle M
Boyden, Edward S
author_sort Yu, Chih-Chieh
collection MIT
description Studies of C. elegans will benefit from a powerful method for super-resolution imaging of proteins and mRNAs at any 3-D locations throughout the entire animal. Conventional methods of super-resolution imaging in C. elegans, such as STORM, PALM, SR-SIM and STED, are limited by imaging depths that are insufficient to map the entire depth of adult worms, and involve hardware that may not be accessible to all labs. We recently developed expansion of C. elegans (ExCel), a method for physically magnifying fixed whole animals of C. elegans with high isotropy, which provides effective resolutions finer than the diffraction limit, across the entire animal, on conventional confocal microscopes. In this chapter, we present a family of three detailed ExCel protocols. The standard ExCel protocol features simultaneous readout of diverse molecules (fluorescent proteins, RNA, DNA, and general anatomy), all at ~70 nm resolution (~3.5× linear expansion). The epitope-preserving ExCel protocol enables imaging of endogenous proteins with off-the-shelf antibodies, at a ~ 100 nm resolution (~2.8× linear expansion). The iterative ExCel protocol allows readout of fluorescent proteins at ~25 nm resolution (~20× linear expansion). The protocols described here comprise a versatile toolbox for super-resolution imaging of C. elegans.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1507712023-05-19T03:02:50Z ExCel: Super-Resolution Imaging of C. elegans with Expansion Microscopy Yu, Chih-Chieh Orozco Cosio, Danielle M Boyden, Edward S Studies of C. elegans will benefit from a powerful method for super-resolution imaging of proteins and mRNAs at any 3-D locations throughout the entire animal. Conventional methods of super-resolution imaging in C. elegans, such as STORM, PALM, SR-SIM and STED, are limited by imaging depths that are insufficient to map the entire depth of adult worms, and involve hardware that may not be accessible to all labs. We recently developed expansion of C. elegans (ExCel), a method for physically magnifying fixed whole animals of C. elegans with high isotropy, which provides effective resolutions finer than the diffraction limit, across the entire animal, on conventional confocal microscopes. In this chapter, we present a family of three detailed ExCel protocols. The standard ExCel protocol features simultaneous readout of diverse molecules (fluorescent proteins, RNA, DNA, and general anatomy), all at ~70 nm resolution (~3.5× linear expansion). The epitope-preserving ExCel protocol enables imaging of endogenous proteins with off-the-shelf antibodies, at a ~ 100 nm resolution (~2.8× linear expansion). The iterative ExCel protocol allows readout of fluorescent proteins at ~25 nm resolution (~20× linear expansion). The protocols described here comprise a versatile toolbox for super-resolution imaging of C. elegans. 2023-05-18T13:34:59Z 2023-05-18T13:34:59Z 2022 2023-05-18T13:31:00Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/BookItem https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/150771 Yu, Chih-Chieh, Orozco Cosio, Danielle M and Boyden, Edward S. 2022. "ExCel: Super-Resolution Imaging of C. elegans with Expansion Microscopy." Methods Mol Biol, 2468. en 10.1007/978-1-0716-2181-3_9 Methods Mol Biol Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Springer US MIT web
spellingShingle Yu, Chih-Chieh
Orozco Cosio, Danielle M
Boyden, Edward S
ExCel: Super-Resolution Imaging of C. elegans with Expansion Microscopy
title ExCel: Super-Resolution Imaging of C. elegans with Expansion Microscopy
title_full ExCel: Super-Resolution Imaging of C. elegans with Expansion Microscopy
title_fullStr ExCel: Super-Resolution Imaging of C. elegans with Expansion Microscopy
title_full_unstemmed ExCel: Super-Resolution Imaging of C. elegans with Expansion Microscopy
title_short ExCel: Super-Resolution Imaging of C. elegans with Expansion Microscopy
title_sort excel super resolution imaging of c elegans with expansion microscopy
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/150771
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