Measuring Circadian Neutrophil Infiltration in Tissues by Paired Whole-Mount Tissue Clearing and Flow Cytometry

Neutrophils infiltrate most tissues in the organism in the steady state, often following circadian patterns. Neutrophil infiltration is also key to immune defense under inflammatory conditions. In all cases, accurate measurements of the absolute number of infiltrated cells and of their localization are important to understand steady-state or inflammatory migration patterns and kinetics. Here we present a method to obtain accurate information on both neutrophil number and distribution that can be successfully applied to circadian studies of neutrophil (or any other cell of interest) migration in vivo. Moreover, this method can be also used to obtain information on activation states or effector functions, for example, by measurement of neutrophil extracellular trap formation in tissues.