RE: soaking blocks
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From: | Bert Dotson <amdj@duke.edu> |
To: | 'histonet' <histonet@pathology.swmed.edu> |
Reply-To: | |
Content-Type: | text/plain; charset="us-ascii" |
Soaking can help to ease cutting over-dehydrated tissues. Cold soaks, warm
soaks, and room temp soaks can be used to resolve various sectioning
problems from chatter to compression. The choice of temperature usually
depends on the tissue type and the problem you are having. I use warm soaks
for particularly tough tissues such as uterus, heart valve and disc.
Ammonium hydroxide I have found useful only on bloody tissue and lens that
tend to shatter when cut. If your tissues are not adequately cleared and
infiltrated, soaking will do more harm than good. Soaking before the block
has been faced is pointless. Some chemicals (NH4OH, Decal solutions,
Aerosol OT, Tween) that have been used for soaking can cause staining or
section adhesion problems when over-done. I personally don't see the point
to soaking a block that doesn't pose microtomy problems to begin with. If
you need to soak every block, maybe you need to adjust your processing
schedule.
Bert
-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan.Linda [SMTP:ryan2@niehs.nih.gov]
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2000 11:26 AM
To: 'histonet'
Subject: soaking blocks
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