Post by Ali Maximilian Ertürk

Today in Nature, we report MouseMapper: a foundation-model AI framework to map disease perturbations across the entire mouse body at cellular resolution. Many diseases, including obesity, do not affect only one organ. They reshape nerves, immune cells, tissues and organs across the body. But until now, studying these systemic effects in intact organisms, at cellular resolution and in an unbiased way, has been a major challenge. With MouseMapper, we combine DISCO tissue clearing, light-sheet microscopy and deep learning to analyze whole transparent mouse bodies in 3D. MouseMapper integrates three AI modules: • Nerve-Module: segments nerves extending several centimetres • Immune-Module: detects tens of millions immune cells and clusters • Tissue-Module: maps 31 organs and tissues, including fat and muscles Using this framework, we studied obesity and found body-wide inflammation, reduced peripheral nerve density and unexpected structural damage in the infraorbital branch of the trigeminal nerve, which is important for facial sensation. This nerve damage was linked to impaired whisker sensation in obese mice. To understand the molecular basis of these changes, we performed spatial proteomics on trigeminal ganglia and identified dysregulated pathways linked to axon guidance, cytoskeletal remodeling and complement signaling. Importantly, several of these obesity-associated molecular signatures were conserved in post-mortem human trigeminal ganglia from individuals with obesity, providing a translational bridge between whole-body imaging in mice and human disease biology. Beyond obesity, we hope MouseMapper will provide a scalable blueprint for studying systemic diseases at whole-body resolution, including neurodegeneration, cancer, cardiovascular disease and immune disorders. More info at out X/Tweet post: https://lnkd.in/dQVjeDCN Nature paper: https://lnkd.in/gEm7v7vp Huge congratulations to Doris Kaltenecker, Ying Chen, Rami Al-Maskari Izabela Horvath, Zeynep Ilgın Kolabaş, and all co-authors and collaborators who made this interdisciplinary work possible across AI, tissue clearing, imaging, neuroscience, metabolism and spatial proteomics. #DISCO #Clearing #MouseMapper #Nature #AI #DeepLearning #TissueClearing #BiomedicalResearch #Obesity #SpatialProteomics #DigitalTwin

Video Content