TY - JOUR T1 - Ultra fast tissue staining with chemical tags JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/005298 SP - 005298 AU - Johannes Kohl AU - Julian Ng AU - Sebastian Cachero AU - Michael-John Dolan AU - Ben Sutcliffe AU - Daniel Krueger AU - Shahar Frechter AU - Gregory S.X.E. Jefferis Y1 - 2014/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/05/19/005298.abstract N2 - Genetically encoded fluorescent proteins and immunostainings are widely used to detect cellular or subcellular structures in thick biological samples. However, each approach suffers from limitations, including low signal and limited spectral flexibility or slow speed, poor penetration and high background, respectively. Here we overcome these limitations by using transgenically expressed chemical tags for rapid, even and low-background labeling of thick biological tissues. We construct a platform of widely applicable transgenic Drosophila reporter lines, demonstrating that chemical labeling can accelerate staining of whole-mount fly brains by a factor of 100×. Together, this tag-based approach drastically improves the speed and specificity of labeling genetically marked cells in intact and/or thick biological samples. ER -