Structure of mouse spleen investigated by 7-color fluorescence imaging

Multi-color fluorescence imaging of tissue samples has been an urgent requirement in current biology. As far as fluorescence signals should be isolated by optical bandpass filter-sets, rareness of the combination of chromophores with little spectral overlap has hampered to satisfy this demand. Additivity of signals in a fluorescence image accepts applying linear unmixing of superposed spectra based on singular value decomposition, hence complete separation of the fluorescence signals fairly overlapping each other. We have developed 7-color fluorescence imaging based on this principle and applied the method to the investigation of mouse spleen. Not only rough structural features in a spleen such as red pulp, marginal zone, and white pulp, but also fine structures of them, periarteriolar lymphocyte sheath (PALS), follicle, and germinal center were clearly pictured simultaneously. The distributions of subsets of dendritic cells (DC) and macrophages (M(phi) ) markers such as BM8, F4/80, MOMA2 and Mac3 around the marginal zone were imagined simultaneously. Their inhomogeneous expressions were clearly demonstrated. These results show the usefulness of the method in the study of the structure that consists of many kinds of cells and in the identification of cells characterized by multiple markers.