[Histonet] Capillary analysis by confocal fluorescence microscopy

[Dasso, Greg (staff)]

Histonetters,

I'm throwing this out to the community in hopes that I'll find some creative techniques for capillary analysis.

The current project I'm working on involves staining capillaries in unfixed fetal sheep hearts for confocal imaging and vascular network analysis. We've used CD-31 and CD-34 with limited success on mice. Additionally, the polymer casting material we've used for the last few years doesn't offer adequate resolution with respect to autofluorescence at the capillary level, so my PI has asked me to explore other labelling techniques.

Initially, I thought that perfusion with an antibody or PFBFDA to stain the complete arterial tree followed by a smooth muscle label would work to differentiate caps from higher-order network structures. 

Any ideas (obvious or otherwise)?

Thanks in advance,

Greg Dasso
Barlow Scientific, Inc
dassog <@t> evergreen.edu