Hello again!

I would appreciate recommendations concerning mounting media.
I found a discussion on the topic in the archives a few years back,
but it didn't quite answer my questions.

We are doing lots of in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry
and using several chromogens (most routinely the usual NBT/BCIP
and DAB, but occassionally there is need for other colors).

For ISH and IH slides, we are routinely using Kaiser's glycerin
jelly. This is partially for historical reasons, but in my opinion it
works fairly well. The stains seem to be preserved,
at least for the 2-3 years we have experience of, photographic
quality is good enough for our purposes, and the smell is pretty
mild also, as compared to xylene-based media.

However, I don't especially like the phenol in the stuff
(well, it might be a welcome change to the usual scent
of xylene, but anyway). So, I'm looking for possible
alternatives.

Also I'd like to present a dumb optical question. I know
that the refractive index of an optimal mounting medium
is close to that of the coverslip - and I guess the R.I.
of Kaiser's jelly is well below that of Permount, for
example. But it is a bit unclear to me how this actually
affects microscopy and microscopic photography
in practice. Comparing slides mounted with Kaiser's
or Permount, the difference is not very obvious to me. We
rarely need high magnification (>40x), though.

Thanks in advance!

Yours,
Mikael Niku

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   Mikael Niku             URL: www.helsinki.fi/~mniku/
   University of Helsinki  Dept. Basic Veterinary Sciences
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