Equipment
The facility has various pieces of equipment which can be operated by the Histologist
or booked by staff for a session to be used within the unit. Appropriate individual training and safety advice is given.
Histology Equipment:
- Shandon Finesse Rotary Microtome set up for Tissue-Tek One blocks
- Micron Microtome Rotary set up for Tissue –Tek Two cassettes
- Leitz Rotary Microtome Circa 1965 for large or hard tissue
- Bright Cryostat
- Leitz Freezing Microtome with CO 2 Cylinder
- Ventilated Sink Unit for staining, clearing and cover slipping
- Leitz Labourlux 12 Microscope with Motic Digital camera
Confocal and Axioplan Microscopes:
As part of the departments bioImaging Service we operate a number of specialist microscopy facilities.
More about the bioImaging Service.
School of Biology Histology Unit
The Histology Unit is located in The Bute Building in Rooms A18, A37, A38, A39 and provides a range of Histology Services to the School of Biology and the Bute Medical School.
Services
Fixation and processing to paraffin wax
The unit provides individual tissue schedules for a wide range of tissue types, from extremely small specimens such as snail ganglia and xenopus larvae to plant material and hard specimens such as teeth.
Microtomy
Paraffin sections are provided as unstained sections for further analysis by researchers or can be stained
in the Histology Unit with both standard stains and special stains.
Tissue can also be fixed, processed and sectioned on to the appropriate adhesive slides for immunohistochemical and in-situ staining. Immunohistochemistry and in-situ hybridisation can be performed by the Histology technician using standard chemical chromagens and fluorochromes or advice can be given to the researcher for the optimising of antibodies and antigen retrieval. For those antigens and enzymes which would be lost during processing to wax, frozen cryostat sections can be provided, with the tissue either fixed frozen or snap frozen.
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Haematoxylin & Eosin stained seal lung
infected with lungworm
Van Gieson stained tendon and muscle
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Tutorials
Tutorial and training sessions are provided for every aspect of Histology which includes: the use of the light microscope, general fixation and processing, wax block sectioning, snap freezing and cryostat use, immunohistochemistry and antibody optimisation.
Contact
All enquiries should be addressed to the Histology technician,
Jill McVee.
Some interesting cases...
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Ageing Changes in Cat Brains
Amyloid Precursor Protein, 4GS in Cat Brain
2006
Courtesy of Professor D. Gunn-Moore and Dr F. Gunn-Moore
read more..
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Identification of Wood from Shipwreck
Wood sample stained with Alcian Blue and Safranin O.
Courtesy of Dr. A. Tobin and in collaboration Kew Gardens and Odyssey
Mediterranean Shipwreck Operations
2007
read more..
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Silver stained tissue culture cells
for nuclear bodies and nucleoli
In collaboration with Dr. J. Sleeman
and Dundee Designs for Life, Arts Project
Exhibition May 2008
read more..
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