[Nhcoll-l] Clearing & Staining issue

[Simon Moore]

Hi Sebastian,

These look like mice and preserved in glycerine or propylene glycol (I use the former).  The white tissue looks to me like fatty deposits, mainly tri-glyceride.  This will become more transparent if the concentration of the glycerine is increased to about 70/80%.  I have found that lab. Bred mice tend to have more fat bodies than wild ones.  In some cases, I skinned, eviscerated and fixed the specimens (10% formalin), then dehydrated them into acetone to reduce the body fat problem, then macerated, stained and preserved in 10% glycerine, gradually increasing the concentration of glycerine to c. 80%.  
For foetal mice, that need no skinning, the process is much the same.  However, as I first stated, the more concentrated glycerine used reduces the opacity of the fat bodies.

With all good wishes, Simon.

Simon Moore, MIScT, FLS, RScI, ACR,
Conservator of Natural Sciences and Cutlery Historian.

www.natural-history-conservation.com 
Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Sebastien Enault
Sent: 24 April 2018 15:37
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Clearing & Staining issue

Hello all,
I have a quick question for those of you that routinely use clearing and staining for embryonic specimens. I mostly use the technique on small fish and herps without issues, but when processing foetal/juvenile rodents, I've had white tissue not clearing at all during the process. Attached are a couple of pictures to illustrate the issue. This happened on two distinct batches, and if any of you know what's going on and how to solve the issue, that would be greatly appreciated. So far the only way it could be removed is by careful manual scraping, which is obviously not satisfactory considering how time consuming it is and due to the increased risk to damage such fragile specimens.
Thanks and best regards,
S. Enault

======================
Sebastien Enault, PhD
www.kraniata.com

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