Clarification,

Thanks for all your responses.  Its clear that I haven't explained myself very well at all:

We would like to use oil red O to quantify lipid localisation in frozen sections of hepatic and muscle tissue.  However, we must first demonstrate that the amount of staining we get (density) is in fact equal to the amount of lipid present in the sections and to do this we need to set up some titrations using positive controls with known and different concentrations of lipid to show a linear response between staining intensity and lipid concentration.  However, a fat smear is difficult to use as a positive control in this way because it simply washes off the slides.  Therefore, we would like to know what others have done to demonstrate linearity with the oil red O staining procedure.  Is there a way we can treat the fat to overcome its liquid nature (that is to say not the lipid in the muscle and liver but the actual 'fat' being used as a positive control)?

Thanks

Jeremy

 

Jeremy Browne

Liggins Institute

University of Auckland

NZ (09) 373 7599 extn 86444

j.browne@auckland.ac.nz