Identification of major cell types in paraffin sections of bovine tissues

BACKGROUND: Identification of cell types in bovine tissue sections is complicated by the limited availability of anti-bovine antibodies, and by antigen retrieval treatments required for formalin-fixed tissue samples. We have evaluated an antibody and lectin panel for identifying major cell types in paraffin-embedded bovine tissue sections, and report optimized pretreatments for these markers. RESULTS: We selected 31 useful antibodies and lectins which can be used to identify cell types of epithelia, connective tissue, muscle, and nervous tissue, as well as cell proliferation and apoptosis. CONCLUSION: The panel of markers allows the identification of all major cell types in paraffin-embedded cattle tissue sections by immunohistochemistry or lectin histochemistry. Heat-induced epitope retrieval methods are required for most antibodies.