Any idea what this stunning tree-like structure might be?
This video shows the network of blood vessels in the liver. The blood vessels expand throughout our whole body, as well as in the liver, in a very organized way to cover the whole tissue. This way, the arteries and veins can provide oxygen and essential nutrients to all the cells in the organ, even the ones located at the periphery of the tissue.
How did we make the movie?
Postnatal liver tissue was collected and proteins were fixed. The liver was stained as a whole, with an antibody against the protein alpha-smooth muscle actin or α-SMA, which is expressed in cells surrounding the blood vessels. The tissue was then cleared to reduce light scatter and to allow to image deep into the tissue. An image of the liver lobe was acquired with a lightsheet microscope using the 0.8x objective.
The imaging and movie creation in IMARIS was performed by Elisabeth Verboven at the BIC facility at Karolinska Institutet.
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