EASI-FISH for thick tissue defines lateral hypothalamus spatio-molecular organization.

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Cell. 2021 Dec 01;184(26):6361. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.11.024

EASI-FISH for thick tissue defines lateral hypothalamus spatio-molecular organization. Svoboda LabSaalfeld LabSternson LabTillberg Lab

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

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Abstract

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.