Laser microdissection for biology and medicine

: For routine extraction of DNA, RNA, proteins and metabolites, small tissue pieces are placed into lysing solution. These tissue pieces in general contain different cell types. For this reason, lysate contains components of different cell types, which complicates the interpretation of molecular analysis results. The laser microdissection allows overcoming this trouble. The laser microdissection is a method to procure tissue samples contained defined cell subpopulations, individual cells and even subsellular components under direct microscopic visualization. Collected samples can be undergone to different downstream molecular assays: DNA analysis, RNA transcript profiling, cDNA library generation and gene expression analysis, proteomic analysis and metabolite profiling. The laser microdissection has wide applications in oncology (research and routine), cellular and molecular biology, biochemistry and forensics. This paper reviews the principles of different laser microdissection instruments, examples of laser microdissection application and problems of sample preparation for laser microdissection.