>Dear Paul:
>Have you ever done silver stains on sections from PEG blocks?  If so, could
>you let me know if there were any differences from regular paraffin wax?  I
>suspect that there would be more background, but if you have any experience,
>I would be grateful if you would share it with me.
>Thank you in advance,
>Adrian Leek, PhD,
>CytoLogix Corp.,
>Cambridge, MA, USA.

Dear Adrian,

I have done Holmes silver stains a few years ago and they seemed fine.
Indeed, the staining was a little less "crisp" than what you may be used in
paraffin, but it still worked fine with standard protocols.
I also tried the Loots technique (Loots et al. (1979) Stain Tech. 54 (2):
97-100), which also worked fine. I cannot compare with the paraffin
sections, because I never performed that technique on paraffin sections.

I also used to do Glees stains, but I'm not sure whether I tried those on
PEG sections. The Glees technique never seemed very reproducible in my
hands. Holmes and Loots were very reproducible and satisfactory and thus I
stuck with the original protocols. Anyway, silver stains are often very
tricky and when you have a protocol that works satisfactory, though less
than perfect, you tend to stay with it.

Paul

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Paul Klosen, PhD
CNRS UMR 7518 Neurobiologie des Fonctions Rythmiques et Saisonnieres
Universite Louis Pasteur
12 rue de l'Universite
F-67000 Strasbourg, FRANCE
tel: 03.88.35.85.04    fax: 03.88.24.04.61
===============klosen@neurochem.u-strasbg.fr==============================