(546g) Basic Principles of Tissue Transformation Technologies for Organ-Scale Molecular Imaging and Phenotyping (Invited Talk)

Emerging tissue transformation technologies provide an unprecedented opportunity to
investigate system-level molecular and anatomical features in situ. Hydrogel-based
methods, such as CLARITY (Chung, 2013), SWITCH (Murray, 2015), MAP (Ku, 2016),
SHIELD (Park, 2019), and ELAST (Ku, 2020), engineer physicochemical tissue
properties to render intact organs optically transparent, size- and shape-adjustable
while preserving biomolecules at their physiological locations. When combined with
advanced molecular tools, labeling, and imaging techniques, such as stochastic
electrotransport (Kim, 2015) and eFLASH (Yun, 2019), tissue transformation enables
three-dimensional (3D) mapping of molecules, cells, and their interrelationships at
increasing speeds and resolutions. In this talk, I will discuss the basic engineering
principles of tissue transformation and labeling techniques, as well as their broad
applications, current challenges, and future potential.