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Functional and multiscale 3D structural investigation of brain tissue through correlative in vivo physiology, synchrotron microtomography and volume electron microscopy

  • Carles Bosch
  • , Tobias Ackels
  • , Alexandra Pacureanu
  • , Yuxin Zhang
  • , Christopher J. Peddie
  • , Manuel Berning
  • , Norman Rzepka
  • , Marie Christine Zdora
  • , Isabell Whiteley
  • , Malte Storm
  • , Anne Bonnin
  • , Christoph Rau
  • , Troy Margrie
  • , Lucy Collinson
  • , Andreas T. Schaefer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Understanding the function of biological tissues requires a coordinated study of physiology and structure, exploring volumes that contain complete functional units at a detail that resolves the relevant features. Here, we introduce an approach to address this challenge: Mouse brain tissue sections containing a region where function was recorded using in vivo 2-photon calcium imaging were stained, dehydrated, resin-embedded and imaged with synchrotron X-ray computed tomography with propagation-based phase contrast (SXRT). SXRT provided context at subcellular detail, and could be followed by targeted acquisition of multiple volumes using serial block-face electron microscopy (SBEM). In the olfactory bulb, combining SXRT and SBEM enabled disambiguation of in vivo-assigned regions of interest. In the hippocampus, we found that superficial pyramidal neurons in CA1a displayed a larger density of spine apparati than deeper ones. Altogether, this approach can enable a functional and structural investigation of subcellular features in the context of cells and tissues.

Original languageEnglish
Article number2923
Number of pages16
JournalNature Communications
Volume13
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2022
Externally publishedYes

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