Large-scale double-staining of rat fetal skeletons using Alizarin Red S and Alcian Blue
✍ Scribed by Young, Angela D.; Phipps, Donal E.; Astroff, A. Barry
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 106 KB
- Volume
- 61
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0040-3709
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
A critical component in the conduct of a prenatal developmental toxicity study is the evaluation of fetal skeletal development. As the developing rodent fetus is typically evaluated at gestation day 20, at a time when ossification of the skeleton is incomplete, a thorough assessment of skeletal development would include both ossified and cartilaginous structures. Current methods to double-stain the fetal skeleton using Alizarin Red S and Alcian Blue are typically described for small sample sizes or using time allotments for each processing step that are unsuitable for industry. In an industrial setting, there is a need for an effective means to double-stain fetal skeletons on a large scale (i.e., hundreds of fetuses simultaneously). This article describes a method used in our laboratory to stain both fetal bone and cartilage using solutions and procedures on an industrial scale.