Histology Lab at the Medical College of Wisconsin
Housed in a brand new 600-square-foot location, the Histology Lab offers Physiology Department faculty and students a full range of histology services, including fixation, processing, embedding, sectioning, and staining of submitted tissues.
Experimental tissues can be worked up through standard paraffin preparation steps (fixation, processing, embedding, sectioning, and staining), resulting in slides of tissues stained with a wide range of fluorescent and bright field dyes (H&E, Trichrome, PAS etc.). These paraffin-embedded tissues can also be used for immunohistochemistry studies. Frozen preparation is also available. The staff is familiar with the antigen retrieval techniques that allow these materials to be probed with relevant primary antibodies. Secondary antibodies can be labeled with either bright field permanent reaction products or with various fluorophores. The selection of fluorophores should be guided by the filter/dichroic mirror combinations available in the Microscopy Lab. (FITC, TRITC, DAPI, Texas Red, etc.) The DAKO flatbed autostainer can do programmed IHC staining on up to 42 slides/run. The lab is also equipped with a cryostat for frozen sectioning of unfixed tissues. Frozen sections can, of course, be stained in the same ways as mentioned above.