PLoS ONE (Jan 2021)

Clearing-induced tisssue shrinkage: A novel observation of a thickness size effect.

  • R C M Vulders,
  • R C van Hoogenhuizen,
  • E van der Giessen,
  • P J van der Zaag

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261417
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 12
p. e0261417

Abstract

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The use of clearing agents has provided new insights in various fields of medical research (developmental biology, neurology) by enabling examination of tissue architecture in 3D. One of the challenges is that clearing agents induce tissue shrinkage and the shrinkage rates reported in the literature are incoherent. Here, we report that for a classical clearing agent, benzyl-alcohol benzyl-benzoate (BABB), the shrinkage decreases significantly with increasing sample size, and present an analytical formula describing this.