Reduction of autofluorescence in whole adult worms of Schistosoma japonicum for immunofluorescence assay

Immunofluorescence assay is one of methods to understand the spatial biology by visualizing localization of biomolecules in cells and tissues. Autofluorescence, as a common phenomenon in organisms, is a background signal interfering the immunolocalization assay of schistosome biomolecules, and may lead to misinterpretation of the biomolecular function. However, applicable method for reducing the autofluorescence in Schistosoma remains unclear. In order to find a suitable method for reducing autofluorescence of schistosomes, different chemical reagents, such as Sudan black B (SBB), trypan blue (TB), copper sulfate (CuSO(4)), Tris-glycine (Gly), and ammonia/ethanol (AE), at different concentrations and treatment time were tested, and SBB and CuSO(4) were verified for the effect of blocking autofluorescence in immunofluorescence to localize the target with anti-SjCRT antibody. By comparing the autofluorescence characteristics of different conditions, it was found that SBB, TB and CuSO(4) had a certain degree of reducing autofluorescence effect, and the best effect in females was using 50 mM CuSO(4) for 6 h and in males was 0.5% SBB for 6 h. Furthermore, we have applied the optimized conditions to the immunofluorescence of SjCRT protein, and the results revealed that the immunofluorescence signal of SjCRT was clearly visible without autofluorescence interference. We present an effective method to reduce autofluorescence in male and female worm of Schistosoma japonicum for immunofluorescence assay, which could be helpful to better understand biomolecular functions. Our method provides an idea for immunofluorescence assay in other flukes with autofluoresence. [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13071-021-05027-3.