Do you mean to try to demonstrate if the fungi you find in a sample WAS dead or alive before it was "killed" during the fixation and processing? My take on this is the following: if a fungi "dies" naturally in a tissue (either lung or nail, or whatever) that dead fungi either is decayed and lost or its shape has to be modified in a way that it can be microscopically distinguished by the pathologist from other "alive" fungi. On the other hand you could try to use DNA or RNA staining to localize the nuclei and decide if the structure "seems to correspond" to that of an alive fungi. I think that if you find fungal structures in abundance in a FFPE tissue they should correspond to living fungi at the moment the FFPE process started. René J.
________________________________ From: "Bartlett, Jeanine (CDC/OID/NCEZID)" <j...@cdc.gov> To: "'histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu'" <histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu> Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2012 7:53 AM Subject: [Histonet] help with dead fungi Good morning everyone, Does anyone have a protocol they use to demonstrate dead fungi in FFPPE tissue? Thanks! Jeanine H. Bartlett, BS HT(ASCP), QIHC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Infectious Diseases Pathology Branch 1600 Clifton Road, NE MS/G-32 Atlanta, Ga 30333 404-639-3590 jeanine.bartl...@cdc.hhs.gov _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet