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Tillberg Lab / Publications
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17 Publications

Showing 1-10 of 17 results
05/17/24 | Deep-Tissue Spatial Omics: Imaging Whole-Embryo Transcriptomics and Subcellular Structures at High Spatial Resolution
Gandin V, Kim J, Yang L, Lian Y, Kawase T, Hu A, Rokicki K, Fleishman G, Tillberg P, Aguilera Castrejon A, Stringer C, Preibisch S, Liu ZJ
bioRxiv. 2024 May 17:. doi: 10.1101/2024.05.17.594641

The inherent limitations of fluorescence microscopy, notably the restricted number of color channels, have long constrained comprehensive spatial analysis in biological specimens. Here, we introduce cycleHCR technology that leverages multicycle DNA barcoding and Hybridization Chain Reaction (HCR) to surpass the conventional color barrier. cycleHCR facilitates high-specificity, single-shot imaging per target for RNA and protein species within thick specimens, mitigating the molecular crowding issues encountered with other imaging-based spatial omics techniques. We demonstrate whole-mount transcriptomics imaging of 254 genes within an E6.5\~7.0 mouse embryo, achieving precise three-dimensional gene expression and cell fate mapping across a specimen depth of \~ 310 µm. Utilizing expansion microscopy alongside protein cycleHCR, we unveil the complex network of 10 subcellular structures in primary mouse embryonic fibroblasts. Furthermore, in mouse hippocampal slice, we image 8 protein targets and profile the transcriptome of 120 genes, uncovering complex gene expression gradients and cell-type specific nuclear structural variances. cycleHCR provides a unifying framework for multiplex RNA and protein imaging, offering a quantitative solution for elucidating spatial regulations in deep tissue contexts for research and potentially diagnostic applications.

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04/22/24 | A Bayesian Solution to Count the Number of Molecules within a Diffraction Limited Spot
Alexander Hillsley , Johannes Stein , Paul W. Tillberg , David L. Stern , Jan Funke
bioRxiv. 2024 Apr 22:. doi: 10.1101/2024.04.18.590066

We address the problem of inferring the number of independently blinking fluorescent light emitters, when only their combined intensity contributions can be observed at each timepoint. This problem occurs regularly in light microscopy of objects that are smaller than the diffraction limit, where one wishes to count the number of fluorescently labelled subunits. Our proposed solution directly models the photo-physics of the system, as well as the blinking kinetics of the fluorescent emitters as a fully differentiable hidden Markov model. Given a trace of intensity over time, our model jointly estimates the parameters of the intensity distribution per emitter, their blinking rates, as well as a posterior distribution of the total number of fluorescent emitters. We show that our model is consistently more accurate and increases the range of countable subunits by a factor of two compared to current state-of-the-art methods, which count based on autocorrelation and blinking frequency, Further-more, we demonstrate that our model can be used to investigate the effect of blinking kinetics on counting ability, and therefore can inform experimental conditions that will maximize counting accuracy.

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06/20/23 | Ten-fold Robust Expansion Microscopy.
Damstra HG, Mohar B, Eddison M, Akhmanova A, Kapitein LC, Tillberg PW
Bio-Protocol. 2023 Jun 20;13(12):e4698. doi: 10.21769/BioProtoc.4698

Expansion microscopy (ExM) is a powerful technique to overcome the diffraction limit of light microscopy that can be applied in both tissues and cells. In ExM, samples are embedded in a swellable polymer gel to physically expand the sample and isotropically increase resolution in x, y, and z. By systematic exploration of the ExM recipe space, we developed a novel ExM method termed Ten-fold Robust Expansion Microscopy (TREx) that, as the original ExM method, requires no specialized equipment or procedures. TREx enables ten-fold expansion of both thick mouse brain tissue sections and cultured human cells, can be handled easily, and enables high-resolution subcellular imaging with a single expansion step. Furthermore, TREx can provide ultrastructural context to subcellular protein localization by combining antibody-stained samples with off-the-shelf small molecule stains for both total protein and membranes.

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06/01/23 | Glutamate indicators with improved activation kinetics and localization for imaging synaptic transmission.
Aggarwal A, Liu R, Chen Y, Ralowicz AJ, Bergerson SJ, Tomaska F, Mohar B, Hanson TL, Hasseman JP, Reep D, Tsegaye G, Yao P, Ji X, Kloos M, Walpita D, Patel R, Mohr MA, Tillberg PW, GENIE Project Team , Looger LL, Marvin JS, Hoppa MB, Konnerth A, Kleinfeld D, Schreiter ER, Podgorski K
Nature Methods. 2023 Jun 01;20(6):. doi: 10.1038/s41592-023-01863-6

The fluorescent glutamate indicator iGluSnFR enables imaging of neurotransmission with genetic and molecular specificity. However, existing iGluSnFR variants exhibit low in vivo signal-to-noise ratios, saturating activation kinetics and exclusion from postsynaptic densities. Using a multiassay screen in bacteria, soluble protein and cultured neurons, we generated variants with improved signal-to-noise ratios and kinetics. We developed surface display constructs that improve iGluSnFR's nanoscopic localization to postsynapses. The resulting indicator iGluSnFR3 exhibits rapid nonsaturating activation kinetics and reports synaptic glutamate release with decreased saturation and increased specificity versus extrasynaptic signals in cultured neurons. Simultaneous imaging and electrophysiology at individual boutons in mouse visual cortex showed that iGluSnFR3 transients report single action potentials with high specificity. In vibrissal sensory cortex layer 4, we used iGluSnFR3 to characterize distinct patterns of touch-evoked feedforward input from thalamocortical boutons and both feedforward and recurrent input onto L4 cortical neuron dendritic spines.

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01/20/23 | Multimodal mapping of cell types and projections in the central nucleus of the amygdala
Yuhan Wang , Sabine Krabbe , Mark Eddison , Fredrick E. Henry , Greg Fleishman , Andrew L. Lemire , Lihua Wang , Wyatt Korff , Paul W. Tillberg , Andreas Lüthi , Scott M. Sternson
eLife. 2023 Jan 20:. doi: 10.7554/eLife.84262

The central nucleus of the amygdala (CEA) is a brain region that integrates external and internal sensory information and executes innate and adaptive behaviors through distinct output pathways. Despite its complex functions, the diversity of molecularly defined neuronal types in the CEA and their contributions to major axonal projection targets have not been examined systematically. Here, we performed single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-Seq) to classify molecularly defined cell types in the CEA and identified marker-genes to map the location of these neuronal types using expansion assisted iterative fluorescence in situ hybridization (EASI-FISH). We developed new methods to integrate EASI-FISH with 5-plex retrograde axonal labeling to determine the spatial, morphological, and connectivity properties of ∼30,000 molecularly defined CEA neurons. Our study revealed spatio-molecular organization of the CEA, with medial and lateral CEA associated with distinct cell families. We also found a long-range axon projection network from the CEA, where target regions receive inputs from multiple molecularly defined cell types. Axon collateralization was found primarily among projections to hindbrain targets, which are distinct from forebrain projections. This resource reports marker-gene combinations for molecularly defined cell types and axon-projection types, which will be useful for selective interrogation of these neuronal populations to study their contributions to the diverse functions of the CEA.

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11/13/22 | Brain-wide measurement of protein turnover with high spatial and temporal resolution
Boaz Mohar , Jonathan B. Grimm , Ronak Patel , Timothy A. Brown , Paul Tillberg , Luke D. Lavis , Nelson Spruston , Karel Svoboda
bioRxiv. 2022 Nov 13:. doi: 10.1101/2022.11.12.516226

Cells regulate function by synthesizing and degrading proteins. This turnover ranges from minutes to weeks, as it varies across proteins, cellular compartments, cell types, and tissues. Current methods for tracking protein turnover lack the spatial and temporal resolution needed to investigate these processes, especially in the intact brain, which presents unique challenges. We describe a pulse-chase method (DELTA) for measuring protein turnover with high spatial and temporal resolution throughout the body, including the brain. DELTA relies on rapid covalent capture by HaloTag of fluorophores that were optimized for bioavailability in vivo. The nuclear protein MeCP2 showed brain region- and cell type-specific turnover. The synaptic protein PSD95 was destabilized in specific brain regions by behavioral enrichment. A novel variant of expansion microscopy further facilitated turnover measurements at individual synapses. DELTA enables studies of adaptive and maladaptive plasticity in brain-wide neural circuits.

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10/26/22 | Rapid reconstruction of neural circuits using tissue expansion and lattice light sheet microscopy
Joshua L. Lillvis , Hideo Otsuna , Xiaoyu Ding , Igor Pisarev , Takashi Kawase , Jennifer Colonell , Konrad Rokicki , Cristian Goina , Ruixuan Gao , Amy Hu , Kaiyu Wang , John Bogovic , Daniel E. Milkie , Edward S. Boyden , Stephan Saalfeld , Paul W. Tillberg , Barry J. Dickson
eLife. 2022 Oct 26:. doi: 10.7554/eLife.81248

Electron microscopy (EM) allows for the reconstruction of dense neuronal connectomes but suffers from low throughput, limiting its application to small numbers of reference specimens. We developed a protocol and analysis pipeline using tissue expansion and lattice light-sheet microscopy (ExLLSM) to rapidly reconstruct selected circuits across many samples with single synapse resolution and molecular contrast. We validate this approach in Drosophila, demonstrating that it yields synaptic counts similar to those obtained by EM, can be used to compare counts across sex and experience, and to correlate structural connectivity with functional connectivity. This approach fills a critical methodological gap in studying variability in the structure and function of neural circuits across individuals within and between species.

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02/18/22 | Visualizing cellular and tissue ultrastructure using Ten-fold Robust Expansion Microscopy (TREx)
Hugo G.J. Damstra , Boaz Mohar , Mark Eddison , Anna Akhmanova , Lukas C. Kapitein , Paul W. Tillberg
eLife. 2022 Feb 18:. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.03.428837

Expansion microscopy (ExM) is a powerful technique to overcome the diffraction limit of light microscopy that can be applied in both tissues and cells. In ExM, samples are embedded in a swellable polymer gel to physically expand the sample and isotropically increase resolution in x, y and z. The maximum resolution increase is limited by the expansion factor of the polymer gel, which is four-fold for the original ExM protocol. Variations on the original ExM method have been reported that allow for greater expansion factors, for example using iterative expansion, but at the cost of ease of adoption or versatility. Here, we systematically explore the ExM recipe space and present a novel method termed Ten-fold Robust Expansion Microscopy (TREx) that, like the original ExM method, requires no specialized equipment or procedures to carry out. We demonstrate that TREx gels expand ten-fold, can be handled easily, and can be applied to both thick tissue sections and cells enabling high-resolution subcellular imaging in a single expansion step. We show that applying TREx on antibody-stained samples can be combined with off-the-shelf small molecule stains for both total protein and membranes to provide ultrastructural context to subcellular protein localization.

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Svoboda LabSaalfeld LabSternson LabTillberg Lab
12/01/21 | EASI-FISH for thick tissue defines lateral hypothalamus spatio-molecular organization.
Wang Y, Eddison M, Fleishman G, Weigert M, Xu S, Wang T, Rokicki K, Goina C, Henry FE, Lemire AL, Schmidt U, Yang H, Svoboda K, Myers EW, Saalfeld S, Korff W, Sternson SM, Tillberg PW
Cell. 2021 Dec 01;184(26):6361. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.11.024

Determining the spatial organization and morphological characteristics of molecularly defined cell types is a major bottleneck for characterizing the architecture underpinning brain function. We developed Expansion-Assisted Iterative Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (EASI-FISH) to survey gene expression in brain tissue, as well as a turnkey computational pipeline to rapidly process large EASI-FISH image datasets. EASI-FISH was optimized for thick brain sections (300 μm) to facilitate reconstruction of spatio-molecular domains that generalize across brains. Using the EASI-FISH pipeline, we investigated the spatial distribution of dozens of molecularly defined cell types in the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA), a brain region with poorly defined anatomical organization. Mapping cell types in the LHA revealed nine spatially and molecularly defined subregions. EASI-FISH also facilitates iterative reanalysis of scRNA-seq datasets to determine marker-genes that further dissociated spatial and morphological heterogeneity. The EASI-FISH pipeline democratizes mapping molecularly defined cell types, enabling discoveries about brain organization.

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05/28/21 | Protein-Retention Expansion Microscopy (ExM): Scalable and Convenient Super-Resolution Microscopy.
Tillberg P
Methods in Molecular Biology. 2021 May 28;2304:147-156. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-1402-0_7

Expansion microscopy (ExM) is a method to expand biological specimens ~fourfold in each dimension by embedding in a hyper-swellable gel material. The expansion is uniform across observable length scales, enabling imaging of structures previously too small to resolve. ExM is compatible with any microscope and does not require expensive materials or specialized software, offering effectively sub-diffraction-limited imaging capabilities to labs that are not equipped to use traditional super-resolution imaging methods. Expanded specimens are ~99% water, resulting in strongly reduced optical scattering and enabling imaging of sub-diffraction-limited structures throughout specimens up to several hundred microns in (pre-expansion) thickness.

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