Uranyl-Free Staining as a Suitable Contrasting Technique for Nuclear Structures at Transmission Electron Microscopy

Abstract

Uranyl acetate solution has widely been used as staining reagent for samples processed for ultrastructural morphology, cytochemistry, and immunocytochemistry. Although uranyl acetate guarantees high performance as a staining reagent, the radioactive uranyl salts make its use and purchase severely restricted. In this view, we used a non-radioactive lanthanide mix solution as contrasting dye for both nucleoplasmic and nucleolar ribonucleoprotein-containing components. This method guarantees a good contrast without masking the probe-antigen immunoreaction, thus proving to be a suitable tool for high-resolution studies of both cyto- and immunocytochemistry on acrylic resin-embedded samples.

Keywords: Cytochemistry; Immunocytochemistry; Lanthanide stain; Lead citrate; Ribonucleoprotein-containing component; Ultrastructure.