[Histonet] SPURR

[Geoff McAuliffe]

Hi Angela:

    If the tissue is "gooey" something is very wrong. Areas of the block 
with no tissue are fine? Sounds like you are not getting all of the 
water or alcohol out of the tissue. Blood vessel walls are not thick 
enough to be a problem (unless you are processing aorta from a whale) 
unless you are using a very short  schedule or you have a lot of 
connective tissue along with the vessel. Dehydration with graded 
ethanols, clearing with propylene oxide and infiltration with Spurr (3 
changes on a rotator) should work. Maybe your absolute ethanol has water 
in it? Maybe your prop. oxide is contaminated? Maybe one of your Spurr 
components is bad (although this is unlikely)?

Geoff

Marks, Angela wrote:

>Does anyone have any suggestions on working with SPURR?  We are trying to
>embed animal vessels with implants.  The block is polymerizing nicely but
>the tissue is gooey.  I've tried a variety of different dehydration
>procedures (ethanol, acetone, xylene, amyl alcohol) and infiltration
>gradients.  
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Geoff McAuliffe, Ph.D.
Neuroscience and Cell Biology
Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
675 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854
voice: (732)-235-4583; fax: -4029 
mcauliff <@t> umdnj.edu
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