[Histonet] Quantifying lipid in rat liver

[David Burk]

Oh esteemed experts who have no peer,

I am in need of advice on how to quickly and easily quantify lipid
content in rat liver.  I believe a traditional approach is to
process/embed in paraffin/section/H&E and then look for the holes left
by the lipid droplets.  While this is certainly doable it does require
that your samples 'look nice'.  Unfortunately, many of the sections we
have seen here are kind of banged up and morphology is poor.

I was wondering if you all have another method that you prefer for this
type of analysis.  For example, can I just cryosection and stain with
Bodipy or Oil Red-O?  In those cases I could use the fluorescent nature
of the probe to quantify fat content very quickly on a computer.  Here,
damage caused during sectioning should not create too many problems in
quantification as the stain is specific for lipid.

If we wished to avoid image analysis altogether, could we just drop a
rat liver in an NMR and get content that way?

Thanks so much for all your help!

David Burk

Pennington Biomedical Research Center
Baton Rouge, LA 70808