On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Keith Rogers wrote:

> Our pathologist dug this one up somewhere but has no reference. He assures 
> me it is Filipin and not flipin!
> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

  Filipin is an organic compound (an antibiotic, I think) that
  binds specifically to cholesterol. Bound filipin causes a 
  characteristic structural change or "decoration" that can be
  detected by electron microscopy, especially in freeze-fracture
  preparations of cell mambranes. Filipin has also been used to
  block affinity-based staining of cholesterol with other reagents,
  at the EM level.

  These statements are based on notes taken from two papers (1994 and
  1997) in the J. Histochem. Cytochem. I recommend that you do a
  PubMed search to get a more balanced selection of publications
  on the subject -  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

 John A. Kiernan,
 Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology,
 The University of Western Ontario,
 LONDON,  Canada  N6A 5C1