Histological Stains for Semithin sections

[bertie1]

Hi everyone,

I have a wee question. I've just started sectioning semithin (1 micron thick) sections and wish to stain them. I know the standard stain used is toludine blue but I was wondering if other stains such as Leishman's, Giemsa, H&E etc  are also usable? Are there any drawbacks with using stains other than toludine blue? or does the resin impregnation not allow many of the stains to be used? I'm very curious because rarely does one see ssemthins being stained with anything other than Tol Blue.

Any advice would be most appreciated.

Bertie

[richard03]

Toludine blue is indeed commonly used for stain semithin sections to show general structure of the cell. Metyleneblue-azure is an alternative. However if you have to look some specific structures, you can use some other stains too. Follow the links for more details.  

http://www.univie.ac.at/anatomy/beisser/beisser-trachemys.html

http://flybrain.uni-freiburg.de/Atlas/text/Methoden/semiGal4.html

Richard

[bertie1]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the links. I'll have a look at the methylene blue-azure method as that is one I have not come across before.

Bertie

[broiler25]

Check out the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry, Jan 2005

High-resolution light microscopy (HRLM) and digital analysis of Pompe disease pathology   Lynch CM, Johnson J, Vaccaro C, Thurberg BL  J Histochem Cytochem. 2005 Jan;53(1):63-73.

It describes a good method to do a PAS in epon embedded tissue

[SRonald]

I want to do a PAS stain to in my epon sections but dont have acces to that journal.
Could you describe this protokol here?

Ronald