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CLARITY for mapping the nervous system

Nature Methods volume 10, pages 508–513 (2013)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 27 September 2013

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With potential relevance for brain-mapping work, hydrogel-based structures can now be built from within biological tissue to allow subsequent removal of lipids without mechanical disassembly of the tissue. This process creates a tissue-hydrogel hybrid that is physically stable, that preserves fine structure, proteins and nucleic acids, and that is permeable to both visible-spectrum photons and exogenous macromolecules. Here we highlight relevant challenges and opportunities of this approach, especially with regard to integration with complementary methodologies for brain-mapping studies.

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Figure 1: Imaging of nervous system projections in the intact mouse brain with CLARITY.
Figure 2: Intact mouse brain molecular phenotyping and imaging with CLARITY.
Figure 3: CLARITY technology and instrumentation.

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  • 20 June 2013

    In the version of this article initially published, several reference callouts in the text were wrong. The errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge all members of the Deisseroth laboratory for discussions and support. This work was funded by a US National Institutes of Health Director's Transformative Research Award (TR01) to K.D. from the National Institute of Mental Health, as well as by the National Science Foundation, the Simons Foundation, the President and Provost of Stanford University, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. K.D. is also funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Reorganization and Plasticity to Accelerate Injury Recovery program, and the Wiegers, Snyder, Reeves, Gatsby, and Yu Foundations. K.C. is supported by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface.

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Author notes

  1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Kwanghun Chung & Karl Deisseroth

  2. CNC Program, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Kwanghun Chung & Karl Deisseroth

  3. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Karl Deisseroth

Authors
  1. Kwanghun Chung
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  2. Karl Deisseroth
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kwanghun Chung or Karl Deisseroth.

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Competing interests

K.C. and K.D. have disclosed these findings to the Stanford Office of Technology Licensing, which is filing a patent application to ensure broad public use of the methods in microscopy systems and for studying disease mechanisms and treatments. All protocols and methods remain freely available for academic and non-profit research in perpetuity, and supported by the authors, through the CLARITY website (http://clarityresourcecenter.org/).

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Chung, K., Deisseroth, K. CLARITY for mapping the nervous system. Nat Methods 10, 508–513 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2481

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