Staining and writing

Today has been a day filled with two things, writing my paper and staining sections of rat brain. 


Remember last week when I told you that I cut sections of the rat brain? They look like this after they are mounted on the slide.

This is great and all, but if you leave them like this it will be difficult to see the sections under a microscope to really see what is important. That is why staining is necessary. 

Sections are placed in a variety of different liquids, in an assembly line-ish fashion. I dip the slide in one and leave it in for the appropriate amount of time and then go to the next one. Here is what the solutions look like. 

It reminds me of dying Easter eggs. 

Here is the list of things that must be done to correctly stain each slide.

When completed, the slides turn out beautifully. Here is an example of some of the ones I did.

Now I'm off to do more of what I have been doing today.... Until tomorrow.