On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Bruce Abaloz wrote:

> I'm currently looking at the development of reproductive tissues during puberty and am looking for a general protein stain to be used in ovarian sections. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Any anionic dye (e.g. eosin) stains mainly proteins. One
that gives a beautiful blue colour, shown to be proportional
in intensity to the concentration of protein, is coomassie
blue R250 (= brilliant blue R, CI 42660, Acid blue 83). It
is used in much the same way as when staining electrophoresis
gels. See Cawood AH et al 1978 J Histochem Cytochem 26:645-650.
  In addition to the pleasing colour, you can see more 
structural features than is usual in a section stained with
only a single anionic dye.
  
Otherwise there are histochemical methods that detect particular
amino acids - too numerous even to summarize here! 

----------------------------------------
John A. Kiernan
Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology
The University of Western Ontario
London,  Canada   N6A 5C1
   kiernan@uwo.ca
   http://publish.uwo.ca/~jkiernan