Flat Mount Imaging of Mouse Skin and Its Application to the Analysis of Hair Follicle Patterning and Sensory Axon Morphology

Hao Chang; Yanshu Wang; Hao Wu; Jeremy Nathans

doi:10.3791/51749

Flat Mount Imaging of Mouse Skin and Its Application to the Analysis of Hair Follicle Patterning ...

JoVE Journal
Neuroscience

A subscription to JoVE is required to view this content. Sign in or start your free trial.

JoVE Journal Neuroscience

Flat Mount Imaging of Mouse Skin and Its Application to the Analysis of Hair Follicle Patterning and Sensory Axon Morphology

Full Text

22,486 Views

13:58 min

June 25, 2014

DOI: 10.3791/51749-v

Hao Chang¹, Yanshu Wang¹, Hao Wu¹, Jeremy Nathans^1,2,3

¹Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics,Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, ²Department of Neuroscience,Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, ³Department of Ophthalmology,Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Mammalian skin contains a diverse array of structures - such as hair follicles and nerve endings - that exhibit distinctive patterns of spatial organization. Analyzing skin as a flat mount takes advantage of the 2-dimensional geometry of this tissue to produce full-thickness high-resolution images of skin structures.

The overall goal of this procedure is to visualize skin structures such as hair follicles and nerve endings in their entirety without physically sectioning the sample. This is accomplished by first collecting skin from various body regions, including the back hind paw and tail. The second step is to flatten and clean the skin samples.

Next skin samples are subjected to suitable fixation. The final step is to perform immunos staining or histo chemistry on the skin samples. Ultimately, imaging with a dissecting or confocal microscope is used to visualize the geometry of various skin structures.

View the full transcript and gain access to thousands of scientific videos