Lucocq John Milton
Division of Cell Biology and Immunology, Wellcome Trust Biocentre, College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, DD1 5EH, Scotland, UK.
Transgenic Res. 2007 Apr;16(2):133-45. doi: 10.1007/s11248-006-9048-9. Epub 2006 Nov 14.
Genetically modified organisms present the challenge of quantifying structures and functions in organs, tissues and cells. Morphological investigation is greatly facilitated by taking sections in MRI, CAT scanning, histological preparations or EM, and powerful unbiased quantitative tools called stereology can use these sections in a sampling based approach to measure volume, number surface and length. Stereological tools have become methods of choice in the fields of neurobiology, nephrology and cell biology and allow accurate unbiased description of intact organs, tissues, cells and organelles. Stereology has yet to be applied widely in the field of transgenics. Here I provide an overview of stereological methods and explain how they represent a powerful addition to the transgenic biologists armoury of techniques.
转基因生物带来了量化器官、组织和细胞中的结构与功能的挑战。通过在磁共振成像（MRI）、计算机断层扫描（CAT）、组织学标本制备或电子显微镜（EM）下进行切片，形态学研究得到了极大的便利，而一种名为体视学的强大且无偏倚的定量工具可以采用基于抽样的方法利用这些切片来测量体积、数量、表面积和长度。体视学工具已成为神经生物学、肾脏病学和细胞生物学领域的首选方法，能够对完整的器官、组织、细胞和细胞器进行准确且无偏倚的描述。体视学在转基因领域尚未得到广泛应用。在此，我将概述体视学方法，并解释它们如何成为转基因生物学家技术宝库中的一项强大补充。
