High-resolution imaging of kidney tissue samples

The kidney is one of the most important and complex organs in the human body, filtering hundreds of litres of blood daily. Kidney disease is one of the fastest growing causes of death in the modern world, and this motivates extensive research for better understanding the function of the kidney in health and disease. Some of the most important cellular structures for blood filtration in the kidney are of very small dimensions (on the sub-200 nm scale), and thus electron microscopy has been the only method of choice to visualize these minute structures. In one study, we show for the first time that by combining optical clearing with STED microscopy, protein localizations in the slit diaphragm of the kidney, a structure around 75 nanometers in width, can now be resolved using light microscopy. In a second study, a novel sample preparation method, expansion microscopy, is utilized to physically expand kidney tissue samples. Expansion improves the effective resolution by a factor of 5, making it possible to resolve podocyte foot processes and the slit diaphragm using confocal microscopy. We also show that by combining expansion microscopy and STED microscopy, the effective resolution can be improved further. In a third study, influences on the development of the kidney were studied. There is substantial knowledge regarding what genes (growth factors, receptors etc.) are important for the normal morphogenesis of the kidney. Less is known regarding the physiology behind how paracrine factors are secreted and delivered in the developing kidney. By depleting calcium transients in explanted rat kidneys, we show that calcium is important for the branching morphogenesis of the ureteric tree. Further, the study shows that the calcium-dependent initiator of exocytosis, synaptotagmin, is expressed in the metanephric mesenchyme of the developing kidney, indicating that it could have a role in the secretion of paracrine growth factors, such as GDNF, to drive the branching.QC 20170523