Preserving and Determining Tissue Quality for MERFISH Measurements Performed with MERSCOPE

Abstract:

MERFISH technology is based on single molecule fluorescence in situ hybridization (smFISH) and can measure both the copy number and spatial distribution of 100s to 1000s of RNAs simultaneously.1 However, the RNA in fresh frozen and fixed frozen tissue samples are susceptible to degradation, easily lowering tissue quality. Therefore, preserving and determining the tissue quality of samples is vital for successful MERFISH measurements. To ensure that only high-quality tissue samples are imaged by the MERSCOPETM Platform, Vizgen scientists carefully prepare tissue sections, measure sample RNA quality at multiple steps in the MERSCOPE workflow and verify sample preparation before running a full MERFISH experiment. Our quality control strategies are easily adoptable, and we highly recommend labs use these procedures as a guideline for developing in-house best practices.