Abstract
Changes in blood vessels and lymphatics in health and disease are easier to understand and interpret when studied microscopically in three dimensions. The mouse trachea is a simple, yet powerful, and versatile model system in which to achieve this. We describe practical immunohistochemical methods for fluorescence and confocal microscopy of wholemounts of the mouse trachea to achieve this purpose in which the entire vasculature can be visualized from the organ level to the cellular and subcellular level. Blood vessels and lymphatics have highly stereotyped vascular architectures that repeat in arcades between the tracheal cartilages. Arterioles, capillaries, and venules can be easily identified for the blood vessels, while the lymphatics consist of initial lymphatics and collecting lymphatics. Even small abnormalities in either blood vessels or lymphatics can be noticed and evaluated in three dimensions. We and others have used the mouse trachea for examining in situ angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis, vascular development and regression, vessel patency, differences in transgenic mice, and pathological changes, such as increased vascular permeability induced by inflammatory mediators.
Key words
- Blood vessels
- Lymphatic vessels
- Endothelial cells
- Angiogenesis
- Lymphangiogenesis
- Vascular regression
- Immunohistochemistry
- Confocal microscopy
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by grants R01 HL127402, R01 HL059157, R01 HL143896, and P01 HL024136 from the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and 11CVD03 from the Leducq Foundation.
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Baluk, P., McDonald, D.M. (2022). Imaging Blood Vessels and Lymphatics in Mouse Trachea Wholemounts. In: Benest, A.V. (eds) Angiogenesis. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2441. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2059-5_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2059-5_10
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