Volumetric imaging of an intact organism by a distributed molecular network

Abstract

Lymphatic, nervous, and tumoral tissues, among others, exhibit physiology that emerges from three-dimensional interactions between genetically unique cells. A technology capable of volumetrically imaging transcriptomes, genotypes, and morphologies in a single de novo measurement would therefore provide a critical view into the biological complexity of living systems. Here we achieve this by extending DNA microscopy, an imaging modality that encodes a spatio-genetic map of a specimen via a massive distributed network of DNA molecules inside it, to three dimensions and multiple length scales in developing zebrafish embryos.