Would anyone have an idea about how to stain whole porcine trachea so that the cartilage rings show prominently? There have been several excellent articles that use Alcian Blue or an Alcian Blue/Alizarin Red S combination to stain rodent tracheas (mouse/rat) and the pictures are wonderful (Schipani et al., 2001; Regnier et al., 2002; Dolle et al., 1993). However, I have tried to reproduce the results using the same protocols just a different species and am having no luck (I did try out each method with some mouse tracheas in my lab and the results mimicked what I saw in published articles). I have tried different digestion/clearing solutions, times, pH, etc and continue to end up with a trachea that is quite ugly with no differentiation between cartilage rings and connective tissue.
Does anyone have a suggestion on why pig trachea would not stain even similar to mouse trachea? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much for your time and input. Michelle A. Griffin BA, BS, MHA University of Iowa Comparative Pathology Laboratory 200 Hawkins Drive 143 Medical Research Center Iowa City, IA 52242 319-384-4620 _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet