A convenient method for distinguishing human and mouse cells in situ

Animal models play critical roles in the field of biomedical research.Mouse models with transplanted human cells or tissues,such as cell line-derived xenografts(CDX)and patient-derived xenografts(PDX),have been widely used1].Tracking transplanted cells and understanding the spatial relationship between donor and host are extremely important for the study of these models.To distinguish cell sources in mouse xenograft models at the morphological level,antibody recognition methods(immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence),transgenic reporter methods,and chromosome-specific probe labeling methods are widely used2–5].However,these methods all need to consider the issues of label specificity,signal intensity,in situ applicability,and complexity of experimental operations,which increase the difficulty in use.In this report,we described a simple method for accurately distinguishing human and mouse nuclei based on 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole(DAPI)staining.This method can accurately identify species not only in cultured cells,but also in mouse xenograft models.Using short-wavelength excitation and high brightness of DAPI stains,this easy-to-use method is expected to be widely used in the field of biomedical research.