[Histonet] help with muscle histology

[Colleen Forster]

Fellow Histonetters...any help would be appreciated.


I have a couple questions about getting good muscle samples. I have a 
project in the lab right now that is working with laser. The student is 
taking rat legs for this. What he does is cut a laser line into the 
large muscle of the rat lag at different settings. Then he sacrifices 
the rat and harvests the entire leg. He fixes this (this time fro 3 
weeks) so I know it is fixed and then cuts the sample just before and 
after the laser cut. Here are the tweo problems I need help with:

   1. When he does this he leaves the rat femur in the sample. So, I
      have been decaling this with an EDTA solution. Should I use
      something else?
   2. When I cut these after they have decaled and been processed etc.,
      the muscle seems to separate instead of staying closely bundled.
      This is a problem as we want to measure the zone of tissues damage
      from the laser mark.
   3. Any help would be appreciated......I thought maybe you could give
      me would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks in advance.....

Colleen Forster
U of MN