Roger, 

I have never used Flex and Clearite 3 although I would be open to trying it.  
Just wondering why you use those reagents, and do you think I could use your 
processing schedule with ethanol and xylene?  We also use a VIP processor. 
> 
> Bob: 
> We process animal tissue almost exclusively--mouse and 
> rat being the two primary small animal species.  The 
> primary thing is not to overprocess.  For mice (and 
> maybe hamster), most processing steps are 30min, with 
> two 1hour steps in paraffin (Shandon Hypercenter XP) 
> or four 30min steps in a VIP E300.  (Of course, you 
> could set up the VIP identical to the Shandon.)  I 
> really like the Shandon for mouse tissue--cuts like 
> butter, with no overprocessing issues.  With rat 
> tissue, we go to a 45min step for dehydration and then 
> into clearing for 1 hour.  Paraffin is two 1.5hr steps 
> on the Shandons or four 45min steps on the VIP.  We do 
> occasionally get some overprocessing of liver on the 
> VIP, but brains and skins are generally underprocessed 
> on the Shandon.  If I had the time I would try to 
> refine the rat schedule a bit, but our workload rather 
> mitigates against such things.  A couple of notes 
> about our processing:  we use Richard Allan's Flex and 
> ClearRite 3 for processing, not Ethanol and Xylene; on 
> the VIP's, we use the "agitation" setting, but not the 
> P/V on dehydration/clearing steps.  P/V is used only 
> on the paraffin steps.  I have had some people play 
> with the programs using P/V during dehydration, and 
> was that tissue ever overdried and crunchy!!  Other 
> specifics:  we use a 70, 80, 95, 95, 100, 100% Flex, 
> 1:1 Flex:CR3 and 2 steps of CR3.  (we start with NBF). 
> Hope this helps. 
> Roger 
> --- r-meyer2@northwestern.edu wrote: 
> > Could anyone guide me to some good books on animal 
> > processing.  We work mostly 
> > with mouse, rat, and hamster tissues.  We get a 
> > variety of organs as well so I 
> > need a book or books that would cover how to process 
> > different organs.  Also, 
> > just wondering if there is a lab that has a lot of 
> > experience in this area that 
> > I could get in contact with for help in getting good 
> > processing schedules going 
> > for the variety of tissues we work with. 
> > 
> > Thanks 
> > Bob Meyer, HTL 
> > Northwestern University 
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
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