Cellular Identification and Quantification of Senescence-Associated β-Galactosidase Activity In Vivo

Senescence-associated β-galactosidase (hereafter SA-β-gal) staining has now been employed for more than 20 years to identify the presence of senescent cells (Dimri et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 92:9363-9367, 1995). These cells, characterized by a permanent cell-cycle arrest (Hayflick and Moorhead, Exp Cell Res 25:585-621, 1961) and the production of a distinct secretory phenotype of cytokines, chemokines, and proteases (Coppe et al., PLoS Biol 6:2853-2868, 2008), have received much attention in recent years for their impacts on diverse biological processes. Here we describe a method to identify and quantify the specific cells that become senescent in vivo using transmission electron microscopy after SA-β-gal staining that can be used in countless scenarios.