On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, Judy Trogadis wrote:

> We are interested in differentiating between arteries and 
>veins in the adult rat pulmonary vasculature. Are there specific 
> markers or antibodies we could use? 

Why not use an ordinary connective tissue stain
such as van Gieson's. Arteries have thicker walls,
mostly muscle (yellow) and veins have thinner
walls with relatively less muscle and more
adventitial collagen (red).

> A fluorescent marker is required for the confocal 
> technique. 

It would be, but with van Gieson you could do
the job with an ordinary microscope - much
cheaper and easier to use! For what it's worth
the acid fuchsine component of van Gieson is
fluorescent. The picric acid suppresses 
autofluorescence, and so does the Weigert's
iron haematoxylin that's used to stain nuclei.

----------------------------------------
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