I tried polyester wax years ago and came to the conclusion I needed to
be cutting in a walk-in-cooler.  I never thought of keeping the knife
and block in the fridge, but it make sense.  I second the vote for any
other method.  Unless you love challenges and have the patience of a
saint.  

Sarah Jones HT(ASCP)
Dept. of Vet. Anatomy & Public Health
Histology Lab
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4458
phone: 979-845-3177
fax:  979-458-3499


>>>  5/4/2004 10:44:42 AM >>>

Hi Rebecca,

Many, many years ago I used 37 degree C MPT polyester wax. There are
several major problems using the stuff. Key one is temperature. Blocks
and
knife were kept in the fridge, with both brought out just prior to use
-we
used a Cambridge rocker which meant transfer of knife to and from the
fridge was easy. In the summer in our lab which had no air
conditioning,
there are minutes of cutting time available before the block and kife
warms
up and sectioning has to stop. One paper I read partly overcame this
narrow
curring window by using a flower sieve packed with dry ice suspended
above
the microtome. our resources did not stretch that far in those days
(mid
70's). Once you have your sections, we had to use a starch based
adhesive
which was added to the slide and sections floated directly onto the
pool of
adesive. The trick was to ensure one end of the ribbon overlapped the
end
of the slide so that after the short period of time the sections took
to
expand and de-crease, the slide could be tipped allowing the adhesive
to
run away leaving a nice ribbon on the slide. The rest was easy!!

Having read all of this, it comes as no surprise that my advice is to
try
every other option for getting what you want first.

Best of luck.

Steve


                                                                       
                                                                        
    
                      Rebecca Nishi                    
                                                                        
    
                      Sent by:                               To:     
                                  
         
                      histonet-bounces@lists.utsouth         cc:       
                                                                        
    
                      western.edu                            Subject:
[Histonet] Mouse and rat injured spinal cord - polyester wax            
      
                                                                       
                                                                        
    
                                                                       
                                                                        
    
                      04/05/2004 16:19                                 
                                                                        
    
                                                                       
                                                                        
    
                                                                       
                                                                        
    




Has anyone used polyester wax embedding for mouse or rat injured
spinal
cord. We would like to use a low melt wax instead of paraffin or
plastic to
preserve some of the antigens we are interested in, but we also are
interested in doing stereology, so we want consistent and a complete
set of
sections. Also, the injured area poses many problems for sectioning.

Does anyone have any tips for cutting and staining with this wax? I am
going
to use a rotary microtome.

Thanks Rebecca


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