Dissection and Coronal Slice Preparation of Developing Mouse Pituitary Gland

The pituitary gland or hypophysis is an important endocrine organ secreting hormones essential for homeostasis. It consists of two glands with separate embryonic origins and functions — the neurohypophysis and the adenohypophysis. The developing mouse pituitary gland is tiny and delicate with an elongated oval shape. A coronal section is preferred to display both the adenohypophysis and neurohypophysis in a single slice of the mouse pituitary. The goal of this protocol is to achieve proper pituitary coronal sections with well-preserved tissue architectures from developing mice. In this protocol, we describe in detail how to dissect and process pituitary glands properly from developing mice. First, mice are fixed by transcardial perfusion of formaldehyde prior to dissection. Then three different dissecting techniques are applied to obtain intact pituitary glands depending on the age of mice. For fetal mice aged embryonic days (E) 17.5 - 18.5 and neonates up to 4 days, the entire sella regions including the sphenoid bone, gland, and trigeminal nerves are dissected. For pups aged postnatal days (P) 5 - 14, the pituitary glands connected with trigeminal nerves are dissected as a whole. For mice over 3 weeks old, the pituitary glands are carefully dissected free from the surrounding tissues. We also display how to embed the pituitary glands in a proper orientation by using the surrounding tissues as landmarks to obtain satisfying coronal sections. These methods are useful in analyzing histological and developmental features of pituitary glands in developing mice.