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LANTHANUM STAINING OF THE SURFACE COAT OF CELLS : Its Enhancement by the Use of Fixatives Containing Alcian Blue or Cetylpyridinium Chloride

Among the techniques which have been reported to stain the surface coat of cells, for electron microscopy, is lanthanum staining en bloc. Similarly, the presence of the cationic dye, Alcian blue 8GX, in a primary glutaraldehyde fixative has been reported to improve the preservation of the surface co...

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Autor principal: Shea, Stephen M.
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Rockefeller University Press 1971
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2108054/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4108476
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author Shea, Stephen M.
author_facet Shea, Stephen M.
author_sort Shea, Stephen M.
collection PubMed
description Among the techniques which have been reported to stain the surface coat of cells, for electron microscopy, is lanthanum staining en bloc. Similarly, the presence of the cationic dye, Alcian blue 8GX, in a primary glutaraldehyde fixative has been reported to improve the preservation of the surface coat of cells of many types; however, the preserved coat is not very electron opaque unless thin sections are counterstained. The present paper shows that for several rat tissues lanthanum staining en bloc is an effective electron stain for the cell surface, giving excellent contrast, if combined sequentially with prefixation in an aldehyde fixative containing Alcian blue. The cationic substance cetylpyridinium chloride was found to have a similar effect to that of Alcian blue in enhancing the lanthanum staining of the surface coat material of the brush border of intestinal epithelial cells. The patterns of lanthanum staining obtained for the tissues studied strikingly resemble those reported in the literature where tissues are stained by several standard methods for demonstrating mucosubstances at the ultrastructural level. This fact and the reproduction of the effect of Alcian blue by cetylpyridinium chloride constitute a persuasive empirical argument that the material visualized is a mucopolysaccharide or mucopolysaccharide-protein complex.
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spelling pubmed-21080542008-05-01 LANTHANUM STAINING OF THE SURFACE COAT OF CELLS : Its Enhancement by the Use of Fixatives Containing Alcian Blue or Cetylpyridinium Chloride Shea, Stephen M. J Cell Biol Article Among the techniques which have been reported to stain the surface coat of cells, for electron microscopy, is lanthanum staining en bloc. Similarly, the presence of the cationic dye, Alcian blue 8GX, in a primary glutaraldehyde fixative has been reported to improve the preservation of the surface coat of cells of many types; however, the preserved coat is not very electron opaque unless thin sections are counterstained. The present paper shows that for several rat tissues lanthanum staining en bloc is an effective electron stain for the cell surface, giving excellent contrast, if combined sequentially with prefixation in an aldehyde fixative containing Alcian blue. The cationic substance cetylpyridinium chloride was found to have a similar effect to that of Alcian blue in enhancing the lanthanum staining of the surface coat material of the brush border of intestinal epithelial cells. The patterns of lanthanum staining obtained for the tissues studied strikingly resemble those reported in the literature where tissues are stained by several standard methods for demonstrating mucosubstances at the ultrastructural level. This fact and the reproduction of the effect of Alcian blue by cetylpyridinium chloride constitute a persuasive empirical argument that the material visualized is a mucopolysaccharide or mucopolysaccharide-protein complex. The Rockefeller University Press 1971-12-01 /pmc/articles/PMC2108054/ /pubmed/4108476 Text en Copyright © 1971 by The Rockefeller University Press This article is distributed under the terms of an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike–No Mirror Sites license for the first six months after the publication date (see http://www.rupress.org/terms). After six months it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 4.0 Unported license, as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Shea, Stephen M.
LANTHANUM STAINING OF THE SURFACE COAT OF CELLS : Its Enhancement by the Use of Fixatives Containing Alcian Blue or Cetylpyridinium Chloride
title LANTHANUM STAINING OF THE SURFACE COAT OF CELLS : Its Enhancement by the Use of Fixatives Containing Alcian Blue or Cetylpyridinium Chloride
title_full LANTHANUM STAINING OF THE SURFACE COAT OF CELLS : Its Enhancement by the Use of Fixatives Containing Alcian Blue or Cetylpyridinium Chloride
title_fullStr LANTHANUM STAINING OF THE SURFACE COAT OF CELLS : Its Enhancement by the Use of Fixatives Containing Alcian Blue or Cetylpyridinium Chloride
title_full_unstemmed LANTHANUM STAINING OF THE SURFACE COAT OF CELLS : Its Enhancement by the Use of Fixatives Containing Alcian Blue or Cetylpyridinium Chloride
title_short LANTHANUM STAINING OF THE SURFACE COAT OF CELLS : Its Enhancement by the Use of Fixatives Containing Alcian Blue or Cetylpyridinium Chloride
title_sort lanthanum staining of the surface coat of cells : its enhancement by the use of fixatives containing alcian blue or cetylpyridinium chloride
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2108054/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4108476
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