[Histonet] resin embedded tissue and sirius red staining

[Y. Wang]

Dear histonetters,

I have a question regarding the feasibility of staining resin embedded 
skin (in technovit) with Picosirius red (for collagen). We have some old 
samples embedded in resin that we would like to stain for collagen if at 
all possible. We normally do our sirius red staining on frozen and 
paraffin embedded tissue with good results. I tried running the same 
protocol (1hr sirius red followed by quick wash in acidified water) as 
well as at longer times (sirius red for 3 hours) with the resin sections 
but I get very dull staining (under polarized light I do not get the nice 
red/green/orange/yellow I normally see, instead it's rather murky). I 
haven't found anything online in terms of staining resin embedded samples 
with sirius red so I was wondering if this was one of those things that 
can't be done. Any comments would be much appreciated.

Thank you
Yak-Nam Wang

Senior Fellow
Department of Bioengineering
University of Washington
Box 357962
Seattle, WA 98195

Tel.: (206)-221-5873
Fax.: (206)-221-5874