DMMC Course: TECHNIQUES & STRATEGIES IN MOLECULAR MEDICINE

1215-1300 Thursday 13 December 2007, Panoz institute, LTEE2, TCD

Laser Capture Microdissection and in situ hybridisation
Dr Orla Sheils (Institute of Molecular Medicine, TCD)

Laser Capture Microdissection is a method for procuring pure cells from specific microscopic regions of tissue sections. Under the microscope, tissues are heterogeneous complicated structures with hundreds of different cell types locked in morphologic units. In disease pathologies, the diseased cells of interest are surrounded by these heterogeneous tissue elements. Laser Capture Microdissection constitutes an essential upstream technology to molecular analysis methods studying evolving disease lesions in actual tissue.

In Situ Hybridization techniques allow the demonstration of specific nucleic acid sequences within their cellular environment. A logical extension of early in situ hybridization (ISH) techniques, which exploited the ability to label DNA with high-energy fluorophores, is FISH. This technique is now applied in an increasing number of molecular diagnostic areas, including karyotype analysis, gene mapping, disease diagnosis, and therapeutic targeting.