Please cite this article as: Susaki and Ueda, Whole-body and Whole-Organ Clearing and Imaging Techniques with Single-Cell Resolution: Toward Organism-Level Systems Biology in Mammals, Cell Chemical Biology (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chembiol.2015.11.009 Cell Chemical Biology Review Whole-body and Whole-Organ Clearing and Imaging Techniques with Single-Cell Resolution: Toward Organism-Level Systems Biology in Mammals Etsuo A. Susaki1,2,3,4 and Hiroki R. Ueda1,3,4,* 1Department of Systems Pharmacology, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan 2PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), 4-1-8 Honcho, Kawaguchi, Saitama, 332-0012, Japan 3Laboratory for Synthetic Biology, RIKEN Quantitative Biology Center (QBiC), 1-3, Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0874, Japan 4AMED-CREST, Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED), 1-7-1, Ohte-machi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 100-0004, Japan *Correspondence:
[email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chembiol.2015.11.009 Organism-level systems biology aims to identify, analyze, control and design cellular circuits in organisms. Many experimental and computational approaches have been developed over the years to allow us to conduct these studies. Some of the most powerful methods are based on using optical imaging in combina- tion with fluorescent labeling, and for those one of the long-standing stumbling blocks has been tissue opacity. Recently, the solutions to this problem have started to emerge based on whole-body and whole-or- gan clearing techniques that employ innovative tissue-clearing chemistry.