[Histonet] Users of Prolong Gold Antifade from Invitrogen

[Kevin Clayton]

Hey all

Anyone out there know how dry your samples (sections/cells) should be before
mounting using Prolong Gold? I have noticed (rarely) that sometimes all
fluorescent signal - including DAPI - is much greater in some specimens than
others from the same slide and otherwise treated the exact same. The product
guidelines says to "remove any excess liquid from the specimen" but how much
excess is excess? I generally try to remove liquid drops and letting visible
liquid evaporate - without actually drying them - but a balance is difficult
to achieve and it is impossible to get all samples from an experiment to the
same level of "dryness". (And, man, do things dry quickly here in Spain
compared to Ireland!) There's generally no problems with my samples but the
concern is that the fluorescent signal/background could be affected, which
would be a big problem when comparing signal strength within experiments.

If someone knows that would be great (and it would save me the obvious and
fairly simple test I should really have done ages ago!).

Thanks,

Kevin