On Tue, 5 Jun 2001, Sharon E Willman wrote:
> We have a procedure for Picro-Sirius Red stain, but do not have
> the reference from where we obtained it.  Does anyone have the
> reference for this special stain?

There are variations in the way it's done, but the classical 
paper is probably   Sweat F, Puchtler H & Rosenthal S
(1964) Sirius red F3BA as a stain for connective tissue.
Arch. Pathol. 78: 69-72. The method you are using may not, of
course, be exactly the same. The most thorough study of this useful
technique is probably by Junqueira et al. (1979) Histochem. J. 
11: 447-455. Among other things, they showed that staining of 
collagen occurred slowly (in contrast to va Gieson's method),
needing the best part of an hour. (It's a good investment of 
time because sirius red it shows thin fibres and basal laminae 
that Van Gieson's misses, and there's also the beautiful
enhancement of birefringence of Type 1 collagen fibres.)
----------------------------------------
John A. Kiernan
Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology
The University of Western Ontario
London,  Canada   N6A 5C1
   kiernan@uwo.ca
   http://publish.uwo.ca/~jkiernan