Re: your mail
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From: | "J. A. Kiernan" <jkiernan@julian.uwo.ca> (by way of histonet) |
To: | histonet <histonet@magicnet.net> |
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On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, Carla Aiwohi wrote:
> I have a protocol which calls for 1% tartrazine in cellusolve. Can
>anyone tell
> me what cellusolve is?
Cellosolve is ethylene glycol monoethyl ether. An alternative name
is ethoxyethanol. It's in the regular chemical catalogues,
> Is there anything I can use instead of cellusolove.
Probably, but you'd need to do quite a lot of experimentation
and comparison with cellosolve itself. Tartrazine in cellosolve
is used in Lendrum's dye displacement technique. It slowly and
controllably replaces a red anionic dye (originally phloxin)
until only the desired objects, typically cytoplasmic inclusions,
remain red. The yellow from the tartrazine can then be kept or
washed out, as desired. There are many variants, including Bismarck
brown (which is a cationic dye) instead of tartrazine (anionic),
but cellosolve is the solvent in all the published methods I've
seen.
The original paper by A. C. Lendrum (J. Path. Bact. 59: 399-404, 1947)
is a literary masterpiece in the field of staining techniques:
short, erudite and almost comprehensive. Later work has added little
to the technical aspects of this method, but the histochemical
rationale has not been investigated (or perhaps it has and I've
missed it; something that often happens).
John A. Kiernan,
Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology,
The University of Western Ontario,
LONDON, Canada N6A 5C1
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