[Histonet] thanks for the help with mouse bone marrow fixation

[scoop <@t> mail.nih.gov]

Dear All,

Thanks very much for the good advice re improving my bone marrow 
fixation.  I broke the femurs in the center as suggested (I wanted 
the ends) and also tried to fix a little pelvis and some lumbar 
vertebrae.  I put the bones in a 50 ml tube half full of NBF and 
rotated end over end in the cold overnight (as suggested).  I didn't 
want to use the fixative/decal with EDTA because I was afraid of 
losing all the iron in the bone marrow so I decaled quickly the next 
day.  I got great bone marrows with only a few tiny areas of brown 
mush (I think those are the areas that the fixative didn't reach 
well) as opposed to the brown mush with a few tiny areas of well 
fixed marrow that I got in the past.  I did this as a favor for a 
coworker.  Now my only problem is that they want me to do many more 
(the bone marrows confirmed the opposite of the result they had hoped 
for).  Next step - teaching someone else how to do it.

Anyway, thanks very much for the great advice.

Sharon