On Mon, 8 Feb 1999, Sue Danielson wrote:

> Does anyone in histoland have a favorite stain for motor end plates in
> fresh-frozen skeletal muscle biopsy tissue they would be willing to share?
> Any thoughts of references/good experiences are appreciated.

  The easiest way is to fix the section (formaldehyde) and than
  do a histochemical stain for acetylcholinesterase activity.
  If you also want to see the innervating axons, counterstain
  by a silver method - Winkelmann's is a simple one. The combined
  stain looks best with thickish sections: 50-100 um. If your
  requirement is simply to see where end-plates are in thinner
  sections, the acetylcholinesterase method alone should be
  enough.  See also J. Histotechnol. Vol 19 No. 3, Sept. 1996.

 John A. Kiernan,
 Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology,
 The University of Western Ontario,
 LONDON,  Canada  N6A 5C1