[Histonet] X-Gal Rat Brain

[Jacqui Detmar]

Hi Eric.  I'm with Andrea here.  I use a 0.2% glutaraldehyde solution,
too.  Paraformaldehyde will kill your enzyme; paraffin will kill it,
too.  I've tried paraffin-embedding, even with GA fixation and it was
bad, very bad.

Another option is, if you already know which section of the brain you're
going for, is to make a slice where you want to see activity and do a
whole-mount staining of GA-fixed tissue.  Then, you can embed the tissue
in paraffin, section it and counter-stain with nuclear fast red or
Brazilin or whatever.  I have done this with my mouse placental sections
with very nice results...morphology is better than cryosections.  But,
you need to have an idea of which portion of the tissue you want to
examine b/c the stain will only permeate the tissue several cell
thicknesses.  Just a thought,

Jacqui

Jacqui Detmar, Post-doctoral Fellow
Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, 
Mount Sinai Hospital
25 Orde Street, room 6-1001 AJ,
Toronto, ON, Canada
M5T 3H7
 
phone:   416-586-4800 x5607
fax:        416-586-8588
email:     detmar <@t> mshri.on.ca