Hi Charles:

"Charles W. Scouten, Ph.D." wrote:

I need some help from the experts.

Is there a standard measure of quality of fixation?

     In model systems, yes. In living tissue, I do recall seeing some
papers published in the '60's and '70's, but I do not remember the details.
The fourth edition (1976) of Lillie's Histopathologic Technique and
Practical Histochemistey might be of help. Also John Kiernan's book. I
think that much of the literature is too old to be online.

A stain that shows degree of fixation?

     Some have used ???? (escapes me at the moment) to show the extent of
penetration which is not the same as fixation, especially with
formaldehyde.

I don't have a lot of equipment, and don't want to
spend a lot of money, but I have been challenged by a reviewer to show
that my perfusion methods (animal research) results in as good a
fixation as standard methods.

I can see it does, tissue quality is excellent for sectioning and
staining,  but how do I quantify or show that?

     Difficult question. Evaluation by 3 persons who do not know the source
of each sample ("blind evaluation"). Send the reviewer some slides? Send
the editor of the journal some slides?

 Age it 90 days and
report degree of crumbling?  It is 4% formaldehyde fixation.

Cordially,

Charles W.  Scouten, Ph.D.
myNeuroLab.com
5918 Evergreen Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63134
Ph: 314 522 0300
FAX  314 522 0377
cwscouten@myneurolab.com
www.myneurolab.com

 Geoff
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Geoff McAuliffe, Ph.D.
Neuroscience and Cell Biology
Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
675 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854
voice: (732)-235-4583; fax: -4029
mcauliff@umdnj.edu
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